Wild weather in Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska could be the first signs of the havoc that El Ni帽o is likely to wreak this year.
A five-year drought in parts of Texas and Oklahoma has dramatically broken 鈥� with floods that have busted dams, washed away houses and taken at least 14 lives. In Texas the rains came suddenly over the weekend. 鈥淭his is the biggest flood this area of Texas has ever seen,鈥� state governor Greg Abbott said on Monday.
Just south of the border from there, a tornado killed at least 13 people in the Mexican city of Ciudad Acuna on Monday. In Alaska temperatures pushed above 30鈥壜癈 in places, causing snowmelt and flooding.
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El Ni帽o occurs when warm water wells up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and spreads east. It warms the globe and drags rain away from parts of Asia and Australia, dumping it on much of the west coast of the Americas.
The weather we鈥檙e seeing is consistent with El Ni帽o, says Wenju Cai of the CSIRO, Australia鈥檚 national science agency, in Melbourne. He says this event looks set to be an extreme one. Jeff Knight from the UK Met Office says it鈥檚 hard to pin all the wild weather on El Ni帽o, but that it is probably a factor.
Also in play is a weird blob of warm water which is warming the air off the US West Coast, exacerbating the problem. And global warming isn鈥檛 helping either, Knight says. 鈥淕lobal warming is a background tide that is rising, and we get all these features like El Ni帽o on top of it,鈥� he says.
El Ni帽o is also probably playing a role in a devastating heat wave in India that has claimed the lives of more than 1100 people, mostly in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Cai says El Ni帽o can stop or delay the monsoon rains in India. 鈥淎s such El Ni帽o could be partially responsible for the heatwaves there as it makes the air dry and therefore easier to heat up,鈥� he says.
