2023-06-08 20:38:01
Meteorologists announced that an El Niño has officially formed, which is likely to be strong and disrupt the weather around the world. They warned that it will give the already warming Earth an extra boost of natural heat.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued an El Niño advisory on Thursday, announcing the early arrival of this weather phenomenon. It may not be like the previous ones.
This one formed a month or two before most others, which “gives it room to grow,” and there is a 56% chance it is considered strong and a 25% chance it will reach large levels, the company warned. climate scientist Michelle L’Heureux, chief of NOAA’s El Niño and La Niña forecast office.
“If this year’s El Niño reaches the largest class of events… it will be the shortest recurrence window in the historical record,” says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Brown University. Such a short gap between Los Niños leaves communities with less time to recover from damage to infrastructure, agriculture, and ecosystems such as coral reefs.
El Niño typically dampens hurricane activity in the Atlantic, bringing relief to coastal areas from Texas and New England to Central America and the Caribbean, whose populations are weary of recent record years. This time, however, forecasters don’t expect that to happen, due to record-high Atlantic temperatures, which would offset the El Niño winds that normally decapitate many meteors.
Hurricanes strengthen and grow when they travel over warm marine waters, and the tropical regions of the Atlantic Ocean are currently “exceptionally warm,” said Kristopher Karnauskas, an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. So this year, NOAA and others are forecasting a near-average Atlantic hurricane season.
Previously, strong El Niños have led to record global heat, such as in 2016 and 1998. Earlier this year, scientists had said that next year is more likely to set record heat, especially since El Niños generally It reaches its peak in winter. However, this year’s El Niño started earlier than usual.
“The early onset of El Niño has implications for putting 2023 in the race for the warmest year on record, when combined with a warming climate,” says Marshall Shepherd, a professor of meteorology at the University of Georgia.
El Niño is an occasional, temporary, natural warming of one part of the Pacific that changes weather patterns around the globe, often shifting the airtracks of storms.
Earlier this year, the world emerged from an unusually long-lasting and strong La Niña—the flip side of El Niño, but with cooling—exacerbating drought in the western United States and strengthening the hurricane season in the Atlantic.
What this means in a way is that some of the most extreme weather events of the last three years, such as droughts in some places, will shift in the opposite direction.
“If you’ve been suffering three years of deep drought like in South America, then a lean toward humidity might be welcome,” L’Heureux notes. “Nobody wants floods, but there are certainly parts of the world that can benefit from the onset of this El Niño.”
Over the next several months, during the boreal summer, El Niño will be felt more in the southern hemisphere, with “minimal impacts” in North America, adds L’Heureux.
This year’s El Niño will strongly push Australia towards drier and warmer conditions, northern South America (Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela) will likely be drier, and southeastern Argentina and parts of Chile will likely be wetter, he says. India and Indonesia also tend to be dry until August due to Los Niños.
While El Niño traditionally means fewer Atlantic hurricanes, it often means more Pacific tropical cyclones, L’Heureux says.
Regularly, El Niño hits strongest from December to February, shifting the tracks of winter storms further south, toward the equator. The entire southern third or even the southern half of the United States is likely to be wetter because of El Niño. For years, California had been seeking rainy relief from El Niño after decades of megadrought, but this winter’s seemingly endless atmospheric rivers made that no longer necessary, she says.
The northern Pacific coast of the United States and parts of the Ohio Valley could now experience dry and warm weather, L’Heureux warned.
Some of the biggest effects are likely to be seen in now hotter and drier Indonesia and adjacent parts of Asia, L’Heureux says. Parts of southern Africa may also dry out.
On the other hand, countries that were affected by several years of drought in northeast Africa due to prolonged La Niña events will receive beneficial rains, says Azhar Ehsan, an associate research scientist at Columbia University.
Some economic studies have shown that La Niña causes more damage in the world than El Niño.
A 2017 study published in a financial journal found that El Niño “enhances growth” for the US and European economies, while it has been costly for Australia, Chile, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa.
But a recent study says El Niño is much more costly globally than previously thought, estimating damage in the trillions of dollars. The World Bank estimated that the 1997-1998 El Niño cost governments $45 billion.
The United States also faces dangers related to El Niño despite some benefits. Ehsan noted that increased rainfall in California, Oregon and Washington increases the risk of landslides and flash flooding in these areas. “Although El Niño brings benefits in terms of recharging water resources, it poses certain dangers that must be analyzed and managed,” he adds.
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Borenstein reported from Washington, DC, and O’Malley from Philadelphia.
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Seth Borenstein is on Twitter as @borenbears
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The Associated Press’s climate and environmental coverage is supported by several private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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