WASHINGTON – A natural weather event known as El Niño has begun in the Pacific Ocean, likely adding heat to a planet already warming under climate change.
US scientists confirmed that El Niño had started. Experts say it will likely make 2024 the world’s hottest year.
They fear it will help push the world past a key 1.5C warming milestone.
It will also affect world weather, potentially bringing drought to Australia, more rain to the southern US, and weakening India’s monsoon.
The event will likely last until next spring, after which its impacts will recede.
For months, researchers have been increasingly confident that an El Niño event was set to emerge in the Pacific Ocean.
“It’s ramping up now, there have been signs in our predictions for several months, but it’s really looking like it will peak at the end of this year in terms of its intensity,” said Adam Scaife, head of long-range predictions at the UK Met Office.
“A new record for global temperature next year is definitely plausible. It depends how big the El Niño turns out to be – a big El Niño at the end of this year, gives a high chance that we will have a new record, global temperature in 2024.”
This natural phenomenon is the most powerful fluctuation in the climate system anywhere on Earth. (BBC)
