Recent forecasts indicate that one of the most powerful El Niño events in history could arise in the upcoming months, sparking concerns about global temperature fluctuations, hurricane activity, droughts, and other extreme meteorological phenomena this year.
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For several months, forecasters have anticipated a potential “Super El Niño” that might continue until late 2026. Recent forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts suggest that the likelihood is rising.
El Niño is marked by elevated sea surface temperatures in specific Pacific Ocean regions. This significant climatic phenomenon typically results in rising global temperatures and alters weather patterns worldwide.
El Niño events generally amplify the warming trends associated with human-induced climate change, heightening the chances of above-average global temperatures.
According to the latest forecasts from the European Centre, evidence suggests sea surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean could exceed average levels by as much as 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this fall. If confirmed, this El Niño event could be classified as one of the most robust on record, potentially a “Super El Niño.”
A Super El Niño is defined by Pacific Ocean water temperatures that are at least 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above average.
NOAA’s report, released on Monday, noted that since mid-April, “near-average” sea surface temperatures have been recorded across most of the equatorial Pacific region.
Researchers closely track El Niño patterns due to their extensive implications for global temperatures and extreme weather occurrences.
Should a super El Niño develop in the coming months and persist into the next year; climate experts warn that global temperatures could soar to unprecedented levels by 2027.
El Niño events often suppress Atlantic hurricane activity by reinforcing upper-level winds, which can dismantle storms that are forming. The western United States typically experiences increased heat and humidity during El Niño, contributing to a higher probability of parched conditions in the southern regions.
Globally, El Niño also causes above-average rainfall in parts of Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East.
In 2015, the Super El Niño led to severe drought in Ethiopia and instigated water rationing in Puerto Rico, as reported by NOAA. This event also resulted in intensified tropical cyclone activity in the central Pacific basin, with 16 tropical cyclones reported, including three Category 4 storms in late August.
The years 2023 and 2024 are projected to be the warmest on record, coinciding with a significant Pacific climate event known as El Niño. This phenomenon raises surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean, resulting in excessive heatwaves in the Amazon and heavy rainfall across the southern United States. Conversely, the La Niña event introduces cooler temperatures, bringing wetter conditions to the northern United States.
Typically, during an El Niño, the warm water in the eastern Pacific weakens the trade winds, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that amplifies the warming. However, the El Niño of 2023 is distinct; despite rapid ocean warming, the trade winds have remained strong. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, led by Qihua Peng and Shang-Ping Xie, have explored this unique occurrence.
To understand the changes, the team monitored pressure variations across the Pacific using the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) established by NOAA. Typically, as the eastern Pacific warms during an El Niño, the pressure differences across the Pacific decrease. However, in 2023, while eastern Pacific temperatures soared more than 3°F (2°C) above average, the pressure drop was only about 31% stronger than anticipated. Additionally, alterations in wind speed and direction accounted for only about 30% of the warming. What then accounts for the robust El Niño in 2023?
To answer this question, researchers expanded their analysis beyond the Pacific, examining satellite data for sea surface temperatures from NOAA. They discovered that the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans also recorded unprecedented heat in 2023, with North Atlantic temperatures exceeding 2°F (1°C) above normal, marking an unusual occurrence. This indicates that El Niño events can be influenced by oceanic conditions globally, not simply confined to the Pacific Ocean.
The team employed a computer program to simulate atmospheric responses to oceanic temperatures using a community atmosphere model. This simulation helped assess how heat from the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans affects the Pacific. Results indicated that heat generated large columns of hot air in these regions, which then cooled at high altitudes before descending over the central Pacific. This enhanced updraft and downdraft loop directed the trade winds westward, fortifying the easterly trade winds by about 30% compared to what Pacific warming would alone suggest. If trade winds remained strong, why was the eastern Pacific so warm in 2023?
To uncover this, researchers scrutinized NOAA’s ocean temperature and sea level data over three consecutive years of La Niña from 2020 to 2023 using the Global Ocean Data System. During this period, the strengthening trade winds transported heat into the western Pacific, leading to thermal expansion of the warming waters, creating a “mountain” of warm water in the western Pacific — the highest level of heat storage recorded since 1982. When the weakening La Niña diminished the trade winds, this accumulated warm water surged eastward, paving the way for the El Niño event.
To ascertain if the stored heat alone could trigger El Niño, researchers utilized a computer simulation to model ocean-atmosphere interactions with a coupled general circulation model. They input observed sea temperatures from April 1, 2023, when La Niña ended, omitting all subsequent wind alterations. Their model adeptly replicated 87% of the observed warming from June to December 2023, indicating that only 13% of the warming resulted from trade wind influences. The stored heat migrated eastward via massive underwater waves along the equator, forcing deeper cold ocean water upwards, which warmed the surface layers. This oceanic dynamics thus enabled the 2023 El Niño to emerge without the typical wind feedback.
The research team posits that in an increasingly warmer world, substantial heat reservoirs in the western Pacific may become more prevalent, potentially leading to a rise in the frequency of strong El Niño events. However, since their analysis focused on this singular phenomenon, the frequency of El Niño occurrences driven purely by oceanic processes remains uncertain. Ultimately, their findings reveal that the ocean is not merely a passive player in El Niño events but can actively influence their development.
Recent models predict the emergence of an exceptionally strong El Niño climate phase later this year, potentially the strongest recorded.
This event is being referred to as “Super El Niño” or “Godzilla El Niño,” which could lead to severe droughts in certain regions and catastrophic flooding in others, contributing to the hottest year on record globally.
“Projections indicate that the tropical Pacific Ocean will warm at an unprecedented rate this century,” says Adam Scaife from the UK’s Met Office. “Something unusual is clearly happening.”
What is Super El Niño?
El Niño is a recurring climate phenomenon that significantly raises temperatures and disrupts global weather patterns. This occurs when the trade winds over the tropical Pacific Ocean weaken, disrupting upwelling of cold water and causing warm surface water to accumulate in the central and eastern Pacific. As a result, atmospheric circulation is altered.
El Niño is characterized by sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific exceeding 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term average. A “super” El Niño occurs when this temperature rise exceeds 2 degrees Celsius.
The name El Niño, meaning “the Christ child,” originates from observations by Peruvian fishermen who noted that warming typically peaks in December.
While El Niño events occur every few years, “super” events have been recorded in 1982-1983, 1997-1998, and 2015-2016.
What are the Chances of a Super El Niño Occurring?
Westerly winds during March and early April have carried warm water toward the central and eastern Pacific, paving the way for a significant El Niño event. The Japan Meteorological Agency anticipates that the temperature anomaly could reach nearly 2 degrees Celsius by September. Additionally, models from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) indicate a 50% chance of reaching 2.5 degrees Celsius by October.
The National Weather Service estimates a 25% chance of experiencing a Super El Niño by year’s end. If predictions hold that temperature anomalies in the central Pacific exceed 3 degrees Celsius by September, we could witness the strongest El Niño ever recorded.
Currently, signs of El Niño’s development remain weak, and models struggle to provide accurate forecasts, a challenge known as the “spring predictability barrier.” Meteorologists expect to have clearer insights into El Niño’s strength by May or June.
What are the Weather Impacts?
Changes in atmospheric circulation due to El Niño can have far-reaching consequences, including substantial economic damage, crop failures, coral bleaching, and the spread of diseases. “Conditions are chaotic and well outside normal ranges,” states Tim Stockdale from ECMWF. “It’s not solely about increased rainfall; these changes are occurring in areas typically shielded from such storms.”
Typically, El Niño brings intensified storms and wet weather to southern coastlines of the Americas, the Horn of Africa, and China, elevating flooding risks. Conversely, regions like Australia, Southeast Asia, south-central Africa, India, and the Amazon rainforest are likely to face hotter, drier conditions, heightening the potential for droughts, heat waves, and wildfires.
In the UK and northwestern Europe, the effects are less predictable, with El Niño potentially leading to warmer summers and colder winters, although other climatic factors may also contribute to milder, wetter winters.
Even after reaching its peak, El Niño’s damaging effects can persist. Following the Super El Niño of 1997-1998, heavy rains resulted in devastating floods in China’s densely populated Yangtze River basin, claiming over 3,000 lives, destroying 15 million homes, and causing $20 billion in economic losses.
A silver lining is that fewer hurricanes typically form in the Caribbean and off the U.S. east coast during El Niño, as enhanced atmospheric circulation increases wind shear, causing storms to dissipate quickly rather than evolving into major hurricanes.
How Will El Niño Affect Climate?
If climate change is likened to a slowly rising tide, El Niño acts as a powerful wave that temporarily elevates temperatures even further. A strong El Niño could lead to a global temperature increase of 0.2°C.
The last significant El Niño event in 2024 contributed to record-high global temperatures, briefly surpassing the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5°C for the first time. Many anticipate that a Super El Niño in 2027 could also set a new record.
“As we approach 1.4°C, it is very plausible that we will exceed the 1.5°C threshold in 2027,” Scaife noted. “Global warming is inching closer to the Paris Agreement limits.”
Will More Super El Niño Events Occur?
Despite rising El Niño temperatures in the central Pacific due to climate change, long-term temperature averages remain consistent, suggesting that we may not see an increase in the frequency or intensity of El Niño events. Consequently, the National Weather Service has begun to classify El Niño based on the central Pacific’s temperature relative to other tropical regions, although this new classification has not yet gained widespread acceptance.
Both El Niño and its counterpart, La Niña, have been observed with greater frequency and intensity over the past 50 to 60 years. One study indicated that climate change has intensified the temperature variation in the central Pacific by about 10%. However, with only 150 years of reliable data available, early measurements are often unreliable, leading many scientists to be cautious about asserting that climate change has intensified El Niño.
“Will climate change influence El Niño events? That remains a complex question,” Stockdale stated. “The answer is likely yes.”
It is evident that global warming exacerbates the consequences of El Niño. As global temperatures rise, evaporation heights increase, leading to higher atmospheric moisture retention and intensified extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods.
“We refer to this as the intensification of the water cycle,” Stockdale explained. “El Niño can cause dramatic shifts in typical precipitation patterns, likely compounded by climate change.”
El Niño’s Impact on European Agriculture: Crop Failures and Price Hikes
Public Domain
El Niño, a climate phenomenon affecting the Pacific Ocean region, significantly influenced the economy and climate of Europe, resulting in widespread famine from 1500 to 1800.
During El Niño, the warming of ocean waters in the central and eastern Pacific disrupts trade winds, which leads to altered global rainfall patterns. The cooling phase, known as La Niña, and the oscillation between these two phases is referred to as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
This climatic variation poses severe risks in tropical and subtropical areas, notably in Australia, where it can lead to droughts and wildfires, and in the Americas, where it causes increased rainfall.
However, until recently, the focus on El Niño’s effects on Europe was minimal. Emil Esmaili from Columbia University and his research team studied records from 160 famines in early modern Europe, correlating them with El Niño and La Niña data derived from tree rings.
The findings revealed that over 40% of famines in Central Europe during this era were directly linked to El Niño events.
El Niño typically increases rainfall in the region, which can lead to excess soil moisture, resulting in crop failures. Though it did not directly trigger famine in other European areas, it raised the likelihood of famine occurrences by 24% across all nine regions studied.
To better understand this correlation, Esmaili’s team assessed grain and fish prices, discovering that El Niño significantly drove up food prices throughout Europe for several years.
Researchers, including David Yubilaba from the University of Sydney, indicate that ENSO events can still lead to food insecurity and malnutrition in low-income households in regions such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and parts of Africa.
While El Niño continues to influence the climate in Europe, its impact on food security is expected to be less severe today. “Modern agricultural practices are now more resilient, weather forecasting has greatly improved, and markets have become more consolidated,” says Ubilaba.
The El Niño Southern Oscillation, characterized by irregular shifts between unusually warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) conditions, has existed for at least 250 million years and is often of increasing magnitude, according to a new report. It is said that it has grown bigger. Studying modeling.
The El Niño Southern Oscillation, which occurs in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, is a characteristic mode of interannual climate change and has significant impacts on the Earth's climate and ecosystems. Image credit: Li others., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2404758121.
Climate scientists are studying the El Niño phenomenon. That's because El Niño, a huge patch of unusually warm water on either side of the equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean, alters the jet stream and can dry out the northwest United States and soak the southwest with extreme rain.
The corresponding cold mass, La Niña, could push the jet stream northward, drying out the southwestern United States while also causing drought in East Africa and making South Asia's monsoon season more intense.
“Each experiment confirms an active El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), most of which are stronger than the current one, some of which are somewhat stronger, and some of which are slightly stronger,” said Dr. Shinen Hu of Duke University.
Hu and his colleagues used the same climate modeling tools used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to project climate change into the future, except they looked back in time.
This simulation is so computationally intensive that researchers were unable to model it continuously every year for 250 million years. Instead, they made 10 million year “slices” – 26 of them.
“The model experiments were affected by various boundary conditions, including differences in land-sea distribution (on different continents), differences in solar radiation, and differences in carbon dioxide,” Dr. Hu said.
Each simulation was run over thousands of model years for robust results and took several months to complete.
“At times in the past, the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth was about 2% lower than it is today, but global warming carbon dioxide was much more abundant, and the atmosphere and oceans were much more dense than they are today. It was very warm,” Dr. Hu said.
During the Mesozoic Era, 250 million years ago, South America was located in the middle of the supercontinent Pangea, and an oscillation occurred in the Panthalas Ocean to its west.
Current research shows that historically the two most important variables in ENSO magnitude appear to be the ocean's thermal structure and the “atmospheric noise” of ocean surface winds.
“Previous studies have mainly focused on ocean temperatures, but this study has paid less attention to surface winds, which appear to be very important,” Dr. Hu said.
“So part of the point of our research is that in addition to the thermal structure of the ocean, we also need to pay attention to atmospheric noise and understand how those winds change. .”
“Atmospheric noise, or wind, can act to give this pendulum a random kick.”
“We find that both factors are important in understanding why El Niño was much stronger than it is now.”
“If we want to make more reliable predictions of the future, we first need to understand the past climate.”
of study Published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Shan Li others. 2024. El Niño Southern Oscillation has been active continuously since the Mesozoic era. PNAS 121 (45): e2404758121;doi: 10.1073/pnas.2404758121
Diagram of the end-Permian extinction event, where extreme temperatures may have caused forests to die off.
Richard Jones/Science Photo Library
The end-Permian extinction, 250 million years ago, may have been amplified by an El Niño event that was much stronger and longer-lasting than anything we see today.
These giant El Niño events caused extreme changes in the climate, wiping out forests and many land animals. Alexander Farnsworth At the University of Bristol, UK.
The El Niño also set off a feedback process that helped make this mass extinction so bad, he said: “There's a knock-on effect that's making these kinds of El Niños stronger and lasting longer.”
The end-Permian extinction is thought to have wiped out about 90 percent of all species living at the time, making it the worst mass extinction in history, and is widely thought to have been caused by a massive volcanic eruption in what is now Siberia.
These eruptions heated rocks rich in fossil carbon, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide, causing extreme global warming. Oceans became stagnant and oxygen-depleted, killing marine life.
But this doesn't explain the whole story: in particular, terrestrial species began to go extinct tens of thousands of years earlier than marine species.
A variety of ideas have been proposed to explain this, from volcanic winters to a disappearing ozone layer, but the idea that an extreme El Niño might be involved arose from studies of past ocean temperatures based on oxygen isotopes in fossils. Yadong Sun At China University of Geosciences in Wuhan.
Now, Farnsworth and his colleagues have run computer models to explore what might have happened at the end of the Permian period that could explain Sun's findings.
Currently, El Niño occurs when warm water in the western Pacific Ocean spreads eastward across the ocean surface, creating an area of anomalously warm water that heats the atmosphere and affects weather across the globe.
The researchers found that before the Permian extinction began, El Niño events were probably similar in strength and duration to today, meaning abnormally warm waters were about 0.5°C (0.9°F) hotter than average and the event lasted for several months.
But these events occurred in a huge ocean called the Panthalassa, which was 30 percent larger at the equator than the present-day Pacific Ocean. This means that the area of unusually warm water during El Niño was much larger than it is today, and its impact on the planet was much greater.
According to the team's model, rising carbon dioxide levels at the end of the Permian period caused El Niño events to become stronger and last longer. These events caused extreme weather changes on land and killed forests, which stopped absorbing carbon dioxide and started releasing it, leading to further warming and more extreme El Niño events.
In the ocean, the temperature changes would have been less drastic, and marine life would have had an easier time migrating to avoid them. This is why the marine extinctions occurred after more intense global warming. “The deadly extreme global warming that caused the marine extinctions was made worse by these El Niños because they stripped away carbon sinks,” says Farnsworth.
At the peak of the extinctions, El Niño temperature anomalies reached up to 4°C (7.2°F), and each event lasted for more than a decade, he says.
It's unclear whether a similar event will occur in the future — computer models vary in their predictions about how El Niño will change as the planet warms, Farnsworth said — but because El Niño occurs in a warmer world, it's already having big effects.
“The recent El Niño event has caused record temperatures and sparked a lot of wildfires,” he says, “and what worries me most is the signs of tree death in the Amazon during this El Niño event.”
Research shows that under certain climate conditions, El Niño could cause extinctions, Pedro Dinezio According to a team of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder, such giant El Niño events don't occur today because the Pacific Ocean is smaller than the Panthalassa.
“These results are really interesting for understanding the past, rather than the near future,” Dinezio says. “To understand what El Niño will bring, we need to look at past periods when the continents were positioned similarly to the present.”
“I think this is a compelling study.” Phil Jardine Researchers at the University of Münster in Germany have discovered the first direct evidence that the ozone layer disappeared during the Permian mass extinction.
“I don't think this event and other extinction drivers, including ozone depletion, are mutually exclusive,” he says. “The scary thing about the end-Permian extinction is that a lot of things were happening at the same time, and they seemed to feed off each other in cascading ways throughout the Earth system.”
A map showing the expected surface temperature anomalies in 2024 if a strong El Niño event occurs.Blue dots indicate areas where record heat is expected
Ning Jiang et al., Scientific Reports
Climate models predict this year will be the hottest 12 months on record as El Niño conditions persist in the Caribbean, Bay of Bengal, South China Sea, Alaska and parts of the Amazon.
“These are places where the risk of extreme events is increased, and these extreme events are really harmful,” team members say. michael mcfaden NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, Washington.
“They negatively impact human health and increase the risk of wildfires. And in the ocean, they increase the risk of marine heatwaves, damaging marine ecosystems, fisheries and corals,” he said. Masu.
Earth’s surface temperatures are currently at record highs in many parts of the world. The main reason is global warming caused by carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. However, in addition to this, the strong El Niño phenomenon that started in mid-2023 is causing temperatures to rise further.
When an El Niño event occurs, warm water spreads across the surface of the Pacific Ocean toward South America. This vast area of warm water transfers large amounts of ocean heat to the atmosphere, causing an increase in surface temperature.
The reverse phase, known as La Niña, reverses this process. Cold water spreads over the surface of the Pacific Ocean away from South America, absorbing heat from the atmosphere and lowering the surface temperature.
This means that the Earth’s average surface temperature typically reaches record levels during El Niño periods and then drops during La Niña periods.
McFadden and his colleagues used a computer model that took into account aerosol pollution and volcanic eruptions in addition to El Niño to try to predict where in the world record heat would occur. Their regional forecast is the average surface temperature for the period from July 2023 to June 2024.
“Even if it’s not exactly timed to a specific season, there’s real value in having this kind of warning,” McFayden says. “It gives us a grace period to prepare how best to protect life, property, marine resources and economic development.”
The research team considered two scenarios: a strong El Niño and a milder El Niño. It’s now clear that a strong El Niño is occurring, and in fact, it’s likely to be in the top five strongest El Niños since 1950, McFadden said.
In this strong El Niño scenario, the research team predicts that the global average surface temperature from July 2023 to June 2024 would be 1.1°C to 1.2°C warmer than the 1951-1980 average. Masu.
this is Equivalent to a temperature above 1.4-1.5 °C average from 1850 to 1900, new scientist This is considered a pre-industrial benchmark. This suggests that the model is underestimating the temperature since it is already above this level. From January 2023 to January 2024, the Earth’s average surface temperature was more than 1.5 °C above the 1850-1900 average, and in January 2024 it was 1.7 °C above this level.
Temperature records have already been broken during El Niño, especially in the tropics, he said. maximiliano herrera, an independent climatologist who tracks extreme temperatures. “This is amazing,” he says. “We are experiencing record heat and it is inevitable.”
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