The United Nations has warned that the chance of an El Niño weather phenomenon developing in the coming months has risen and could fuel higher global temperatures and possibly new heat records.
In a report on Wednesday, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that there was a 60% chance that El Niño would develop by the end of July and an 80% chance it would do so by the end of September.
“This will change the weather and climate patterns worldwide,” Wilfran Moufouma Okia, the head of the WMO’s regional climate prediction services division, told reporters in Geneva.
Available reports show that El Niño, which is a naturally occurring climate pattern typically associated with increased heat worldwide, as well as drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere, last occurred in 2018-19.
Since 2020, the world has been hit with an exceptionally long La Niña – El Niño’s cooling opposite – which ended earlier this year, giving way to the current neutral conditions.
However, the UN has said that the last eight years were the warmest ever recorded, despite La Niña’s cooling effect stretching over nearly half that period. Without that weather phenomenon, the warming situation could have been even worse.
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In a statement, the WMO chief, Petteri Taalas said that La Niña “acted as a temporary brake on global temperature increase”, adding that the world should prepare for the development of El Niño.”
He explained that the expected arrival of the warming climate pattern will most likely lead to a new spike in global heating and increase the chance of breaking temperature records.
At this stage, there is no indication of the strength or duration of the looming El Niño. The last one was considered very weak, but the one before that, between 2014 and 2016, was considered among the strongest ever, with dire consequences.
According to the WMO, 2016 was “the warmest year on record because of the “double whammy” of a very powerful El Niño event and human-induced warming from greenhouse gases”.
Since the El Niño effect on global temperatures usually plays out the year after it emerges, it is expected that the impact would probably be most apparent in 2024, it said.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
