Climate scientists have warned of the anticipation of the El Nino weather phenomenon that could see the world breach a new average temperature record in 2023 or 2024, one that will be fuelled by climate change.
Three years of the La Nina weather pattern which generally lowers global temperatures slightly was recorded in the Pacific Ocean, but the world will experience a return to El Nino which is the warmer counterpart, later this year, climate model suggests.
Winds blowing west along the equator slow down, and warm water is pushed east, creating warmer surface ocean temperatures when El Nino is at force.
“El Nino is normally associated with record breaking temperatures at the global level. Whether this will happen in 2023 or 2024 is not yet known, but it is, I think, more likely than not,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service was quoted as saying.
Climate models suggest a return to El Nino conditions in the late boreal summer, and the possibility of a strong El Nino developing towards the end of the year, Buontempo said.
The world’s hottest year on record so far was 2016, coinciding with a strong El Nino – although climate change has fuelled extreme temperatures even in years without the phenomenon while the last eight years were the world’s eight hottest on record – reflecting the longer-term warming trend driven by greenhouse gas emissions.
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El Nino-fuelled temperatures could worsen the climate change impacts countries are already experiencing, including severe heatwaves, drought and wildfires, according to Friederike Otto, senior lecturer at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute.
“If El Niño does develop, there is a good chance 2023 will be even hotter than 2016 – considering the world has continued to warm as humans continue to burn fossil fuels,” Otto said.
In the report published by scientists from EU Copernicus on Thursday, an assessment of the climate extremes the world experienced last year in what was its fifth-warmest year on record, was done.
The report found that Europe experienced its hottest summer on record in 2022, while climate change-fuelled extreme rain caused disastrous flooding in Pakistan, and in February, Antarctic sea ice levels hit a record low.
The world’s average global temperature is now 1.2C higher than in pre-industrial times, Copernicus said.
Despite most of the world’s major emitters pledging to eventually slash their net emissions to zero, global CO2 emissions last year continued to rise.
Story was adapted from Reuters.
