2023-07-23 21:15:35
The El Niño climatic phenomenon is in place and this natural warming of part of the waters of the Pacific Ocean is well known to have an impact on the weather of the rest of the world. With the various heat waves currently affecting Europe, Asia and the United States, are we already witnessing the consequences of El Niño 2023?
El Niño is indeed an event that contributes to warming the atmosphere, and the warmest year on record occurred in 2016, during an intense El NiñoEl Niño phase. Is the El Niño 2023 phenomenon already responsible, in part or in full, for the various heat waves around the world? The United States, China and of course Europe are currently facing record temperatures. The role of El Niño is a frequently used argument on social media social media from some climate skeptics who refute the idea that the current heat waves are made worse by greenhouse gas emissions greenhouse gas emissions. However, El Niño 2023 is far too recent (see the red band of the Pacific on the planisphere below) to have an impact on the extreme temperatures that we are currently experiencing in several regions of the northern hemisphere.
The effect of El Niño is felt 6 months to 1 year after its implementation
The warm anomaly of the equatorial Pacific waters reached +1°C in mid-July, just above the official threshold necessary to speak of El Niño which is +0.8°C. The phenomenon will continue to intensify throughout the summer, and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) forecasts it to reach +1.9°C in August, +2.3°C in September, +2.6°C in October, +2.7°C in November and the exceptional level of +2.9°C in December, as shown in the curve below.
It will therefore be an intense El Niño, a super el niño “, according to this organization (knowing that other weather organizations do not agree), but this does not happen in the space of a few days: the waters take several weeks or months to warm up, and the atmosphere then also takes several months to warm up. The effects of this El Niño 2023 on the weather on the American, Asian and African continents will only really be felt from the end of the year, and especially during 2024. Remember that the El Niño 2015 had reached its peak in December of the same year, and it was then 2016 which was marked by intense heat: the effects of El Niño 2015 and global warming had added up for several months to a year after. Same observation for El Niño 1997, which was followed by a global heat peak in 1998.
In addition, with regard to the current year, 2023 began to be marked by record temperatures from April, both on land and in the oceans: the El Niño phenomenon was not yet in place in the spring when the Planet was already overheating.
The European heatwave absolutely cannot be linked to El Niño
On the other hand, to date, the possible effects of El Niño have not yet been proven with regard to the European continent, even several months after its establishment: the consequences of this hot Pacific anomaly are obvious, and major, in the United States, in Australia, in Asia, or even in South America. But it would seem that the phenomenon has no impact in Europe, or else, it is not yet known.
On the other hand, it is obvious that at the global level, the end of 2023 and the year 2024 will be marked by new heat records, due to an intense El Niño phenomenon which will add to the current runaway global warming.
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