The current extreme El Ni帽o is now the strongest ever recorded, smashing the previous record from 1997-8. Already wreaking havoc on weather around the world, the new figures mean those effects will probably get worse. Climate change could be to blame and is known to be making the extreme impacts of El Ni帽o on weather more likely.
The 1997-8 El Ni帽o killed 20,000 people and caused almost $97 billion of damage as floods, droughts, fires, cyclones and mudslides ravaged the world.
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Now the current El Ni帽o has surpassed the 1997-8 El Ni帽o on a key measure, according to the latest figures released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.
El Ni帽o occurs when warm water that has piled up around Australia and Indonesia spills out east across the Pacific Ocean towards the Americas, taking the rain with it.
A key measure of its intensity is the warmth of water in the central Pacific. In 1997, at its peak on 26 November, it was 2.8鈥壜癈 above average. According to the latest measurements, it reached 2.8鈥壜癈 on 4 November this year, and went on 鈥� the highest temperatures ever seen in this region.
鈥淭he El Ni帽o community is closely watching the evolution [of this El Ni帽o] and whether the current event will surpass the 1997-8 event,鈥� says Axel Timmerman at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. 鈥� and central Pacific temperature anomalies clearly show that this current event has surpassed it.鈥�
The temperatures in the central Pacific have the biggest impact on the global atmospheric circulation, and therefore the biggest impacts on global weather, says Timmerman, who has been warning that this El Ni帽o is likely to be a record-breaker.
The event hasn鈥檛 broken temperature records across the entire eastern Pacific, but in the central eastern Pacific. 鈥淚t鈥檚 shifted into an area where most likely the atmosphere will respond even more,鈥� Timmerman says.
Timmerman and others in 2013 that El Ni帽os have been stronger in the last few decades than in any period over the past four centuries. It is unknown whether that鈥檚 because of climate change, but Timmerman and colleagues have also shown that extreme impacts from El Ni帽o鈥檚 will double in frequency this century as a result of climate change.
, Scott Power at the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia and colleagues showed that climate change will amplify the way that El Ni帽o redistributes rainfall, making droughts and floods worse.
Record breaker
El Ni帽o has been implicated in a host of extreme weather events across the globe. Combined with global warming, it鈥檚 partly responsible for 2015 being the hottest year on record. In India, more than 2000 people died in a heatwave caused by a delayed monsoon 鈥� an effect of El Ni帽o.
Now the region is experiencing unusually heavy rains as the monsoon has finally arrived 鈥� also an expected impact of El Ni帽o. 鈥淪outhern India is having a lot of rain as it goes into winter, having come out of the dry monsoon. This is only so during extreme El Ni帽o, so it is a confirmation that the El Ni帽o is huge,鈥� says Wenju Cai at Australia鈥檚 government scientific research body, CSIRO in Melbourne.
El Ni帽o is also probably making record-breaking illegal fires in Indonesia worse, by reducing rainfall there.
And in some Pacific Islands, water levels have dropped so much that coral reefs are exposed, in a phenomenon known as Taimasa, Samoan for 鈥渟melly reef鈥�. 51动漫 has received photographs from Guam showing this dramatic effect (see photos above and below), only seen during extreme El Ni帽o events. Across the globe, the El Ni帽o has also begun a mass coral bleaching.
Australia has dodged some of the worst effects of El Ni帽o, as the Indian Ocean Dipole 鈥� an oscillation of sea temperatures in the Indian Ocean 鈥� which was amplifying El Ni帽o, has eased off. And because of the location of the warmest water, some regions like Peru and Ecuador are also likely to experience fewer impacts.
But overall, Timmerman suspects that the impacts of this record-breaking El Ni帽o will be record-breaking too.
Many of the effects are yet to come. For example, whether it will bring rains to California and relieve the drought 鈥� or even whether it will go too far and cause floods 鈥� isn鈥檛 yet known. Timmerman says the models are predicting a higher chance of rain for California.
And once the El Ni帽o is over, it might not be time for celebration, since it鈥檚 likely to be followed by a strong La Ni帽a, which will bring roughly opposite effects to the world鈥檚 weather. La Nina鈥檚 are also expected to be about twice as common as a result of climate change this century.
