Climate scientists predict that, as a result of climate change and the anticipated return of the El Nino weather phenomena, the world’s average temperature could break a new record in 2023 or 2024.
According to climate projections, the world will witness a return to El Nino, the warmer counterpart, later this year following three years of the cooler La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which typically reduces global temperatures significantly.
During an El Nino, warm water is pushed eastward and the winds flowing around the equator slow down, raising the temperature of the ocean’s surface.
“El Nino is normally associated with record-breaking temperatures at the global level. Whether this will happen in 2023 or 2024 is yet known, but it is, I think, more likely than not,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
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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.
The last eight years were the world’s eight hottest on record – reflecting the longer-term warming trend driven by greenhouse gas emissions.
Friederike Otto, the senior lecturer at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute, said El Nino-fuelled temperatures could worsen the climate change impacts countries are already experiencing – including severe heatwaves, drought, and wildfires.
Story adapted from Reuters
