The weather phenomenon El Nino has arrived, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday, and it’s expected to strengthen into the end of the year.
El Nino is a natural climate phenomenon that warms surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, bringing worldwide changes in winds, rainfall patterns and erratic weather.
In its latest advisory NOAA scientists said “El Nino conditions developed over the past month” as shown by those above-average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific.
“There is a 63% chance of a very strong El Nino during November-January that would rank among the largest El Nino events in the historical record going back to 1950,” the advisory read.
Every El Nino is different, but major events often follow familiar patterns. This includes drought across parts of the Amazon, Indonesia and Australia, disrupted monsoons in India, and shifting rainfall throughout the tropics.
El Nino tends to peak late in the year but heat in the oceans releases more slowly into the atmosphere, pushing up global temperatures the following year.
It also adds heat to a planet already warmed from burning fossil fuels.
Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Wednesday said global forecasters were increasingly confident that a very strong El Nino warming weather pattern could form later this year.
“The odds are strongly in favour of a moderate to strong, or probably strong to record-breaking, event at this stage,” the service’s director Carlo Buontempo told media. –Agencies
