The author is a science commentator
During the scorching heatwave of last year when UK temperatures reached a record-breaking 40C, Friederike Otto, a climate scientist from Imperial College, remarked on the comparisons with the 1976 heatwave by stating that “unprecedented means it hasn’t happened before.”
Get ready for more of the same. The recent announcement from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirming the arrival of the El Niño weather phenomenon, which occurs every two to seven years without predictability, signals the start of a new era of climate uncertainty. Linked to rising sea surface temperatures, this change will further intensify the already warming atmosphere. Some experts even project that the symbolic 1.5C cap on global heating could be temporarily surpassed.
Regardless of whether that happens or not, the arrival of El Niño indicates a period of climate ambiguity, and it is a risk that economists and politicians cannot afford to ignore due to the associated extreme weather events. Even the most well-thought-out plans for addressing the increasing cost of living must now consider crop failures and rising commodity prices. El Niño also serves as a preview of what may lie ahead.
El Niño can be seen as the “heating” phase of a naturally occurring climate cycle in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, while its opposite, the cooling phase, is known as La Niña. Together, they form the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, which weakens and strengthens trade winds, ultimately influencing the global jet streams that direct storms.
The recent declaration by NOAA means that three criteria have been met, according to Richard Allan, a climate science professor at the University of Reading: an area in the tropical eastern Pacific is more than 0.5C warmer than the long-term average, the warming trend is expected to continue, and the atmosphere is exhibiting signs of reacting to this warming.
The atmospheric response to El Niño, which is predicted to intensify throughout the autumn and winter of the northern hemisphere, involves altered wind and rainfall patterns. Researchers anticipate increased precipitation in the southern US and hotter, drier conditions in regions such as northern South America, southern Africa, South Asia, and southern Australia. However, beyond these projections, uncertainty remains, including the timing of the peak of El Niño.
This peak could occur this year or the next, or it could simply fizzle out. “It’s too early to determine how the current El Niño storyline will unfold,” says Allan. “But if it reaches its full strength by 2024, it is highly likely that another record global temperature will be surpassed.” Earlier this year, the World Meteorological Organization warned that temperatures could enter “uncharted territory,” impacting health, food security, water management, and the environment. Climatologists are grappling with uncertainty mixed with trepidation.
The main challenge lies in predicting how countries should prepare. While climate models perform reasonably well on a global scale, making long-term forecasts at the country level is more challenging, according to Professor Tim Palmer, a climate physicist at the University of Oxford. The ability to do so is crucial as nations invest in adaptation measures, like constructing flood defenses. Palmer is among those advocating for a large-scale, multinational supercomputing effort dedicated to climate change, similar to CERN for particle physics. Such an initiative would enable higher-resolution forecasts and provide insights into how the ENSO cycle may change in a warming world.
Presently, the reality is that global mean temperature is already over 1.1C above pre-industrial levels, and the warming effect of El Niño, which impedes the oceans’ ability to absorb heat from the atmosphere, brings us perilously close to the 1.5C limit outlined in the Paris agreement.
While any temperature rise due to El Niño should be temporary, it still represents a new extreme. In 2022, 28 countries, including the UK and China, experienced their warmest years on record. Fortunately, the cooling effects of La Niña helped mitigate these temperatures.
This year has already witnessed record-breaking April heat in Spain, extensive wildfires in Canada, and consequently, polluted skies over New York. This underscores the critical message that the unprecedented is rapidly becoming the normal.
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