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Seth Borenstein
El Nino, nature’s chaotic climate agent, has formed in a warmed-up Pacific Ocean and is expected to grow to historic strength, meteorologists announced on Thursday.
Experts said the El Nino, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will likely turbocharge extreme weather across the planet. Meteorologists forecast it will rival – or exceed – a record El Nino that began in 1997 and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officially confirmed the existence of the El Nino, which is a warming of the Pacific near the equator that affects weather patterns across the globe. NOAA’s announcement said there’s a 63 per cent chance that the El Nino will get so intense that it “would rank among the largest El Nino events in the historical record going back to 1950”.
The warm, deep waters of an El Nino affect weather patterns by bringing “a lot of extra heat to the surface, fuelling a lot of extreme events for a lot of places around the world,” said Clark University climate scientist Abby Frazier.
She said, especially in the Pacific, “it can get dire very quickly.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described El Nino as an “urgent climate warning”.
“El Nino conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world,” Guterres said in a video message.
The weather pattern’s effects vary by region. El Nino often dampens – but doesn’t eliminate – Atlantic hurricane season activity, but increases it in the Pacific. So while the US East and Gulf coasts may get a break, Hawaii and other islands are more in danger, Frazier said.
The drought-stricken Middle East could benefit, climate scientists said. Other places are looking at more danger. Parts of western South America – where the first El Ninos were noticed decades ago – often get heavy rain and floods, along with an extra warm summer.
India faces more intense heat waves, while drought, wildfires and heat threaten Australia.
Northeastern Africa is likely going to get weather whiplash from intense drought to dangerously heavy rains, said Columbia University climate scientist and El Nino expert Muhammad Azhar Ehsan.
In the US, El Ninos can cause more intense storms with heavier rainfall in the South, but they also tend to generally benefit the US agriculture industry, said Jon Gottschalck, operational branch chief at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Centre.
The biggest effect in the US is often in the winter, when the south can get wetter and the Pacific Northwest warmer and drier. But overall, temperatures raised by the weather pattern can dampen American economic growth, said Stanford climate economist Marshall Burke.
Several climate scientists forecast that 2027 will be the hottest year on record because of lagging effects of this El Nino, which is expected to peak in the fall or winter.
“We have pretty clear evidence that the U.S. economy grows more slowly when temps are above normal,” Burke said.
The weather extremes caused by an El Nino also depend on when it develops.
The early indications — including warmer water pushing toward the surface of the Pacific — have been so strong and noticeable that forecasters have all been predicting the same ultra-strong El Nino, Vecchi said, adding that El Nino forecasts often are all over the place at this time of year.
Scientists predict stronger El Ninos as the world warms from the burning of coal, oil and gas, Frazier and others said. But she said it is too early to say if this El Nino is part of that.
Even before it officially formed, this El Nino has gotten nicknames ranging from “super” to “Godzilla”.
“Instead of scared, we can ask people to be prepared,” Columbia’s Ehsan said.
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