The world must prepare for the imminent return of El Nino and the supercharged weather extremes it brings, the UN has warned.
The powerful natural weather pattern, which raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall, has an 80 percent chance of forming before September and a 90 percent chance of persisting until November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said yesterday.
It found most models projected the return of the cyclical phenomenon in the ocean and atmosphere to be “at least moderate” in strength, and possibly strong. Scientists have previously warned that it could be the strongest this century.
Photo: AFP
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world “must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is..
“El Nino conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world,” he said. “Impacts will hit even harder, travel even farther, and cross borders with devastating speed.”
The most recent El Nino, which hit in 2023-24, was one of the five strongest on record and contributed to a scorchingly hot year in 2024 that broke global temperature records.
The WMO said unusually high temperatures were forecast in nearly all parts of the planet for the next three months, and warned of a greater probability of extreme rain and drought.
Although each El Nino event is unique, scientists usually associate them with heavier rain in parts of South America, the southern US, the Horn of Africa and central Asia. Drier conditions typically hit Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia and parts of south Asia.
The warm waters can also fuel hurricanes in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, but hinder their formation in the Atlantic basin.
The finding comes as western Europe emerges from an unusually hot May in which temperature records for the month were broken in the UK and Ireland.
Last week, the WMO and the UK Met Office warned that a record-breaking hot year for the globe was almost certain before the end of the decade, with the expected return of El Nino likely to make that come as soon as next year.
Gareth Redmond-King, from the British think tank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said the latest findings were “bad news” for food supplies as they were already under strain from climate breakdown and the restriction of fertilizer flows from the Iran war.
“The havoc El Nino will wreak as it likely delivers another hottest year, in 2027, will be devastating for many farmers, and a question of life or death for far too many people,” he said.
El Nino conditions occur every few years and last about nine to 12 months. During such years, winds that push warm waters to the west soften or shift direction, enabling the surface waters in that part of the Pacific to warm.
The WMO said sea surface temperatures in parts of the Pacific that scientists use as a reference were approaching El Nino thresholds in late April to mid-May, fed by unusually warm subsurface conditions. It said the atmospheric component of El Nino was also consistent with its development.
It rejected the term “super El Nino”, which some scientists have used in recent months in anticipation of a particularly strong event, because it falls outside the official classification system.
“The only effective response is climate action equal to the crisis — ending the addiction to fossil fuels, accelerating the shift to renewables, protecting the most vulnerable, and delivering early warning systems for all,” Guterres said.
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