Strong El Niño forecast to be biggest on record in coming months
A study published Thursday in the journal Science reports that El Niños — the periodic warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific that disrupts weather worldwide — have grown measurably stronger as global temperatures have risen, with the researchers attributing the bulk of the increase to human-caused climate change.
El Niños are more than 36% stronger than they were before the industrial age began in the mid-1800s, according to the study. The researchers also documented a 16% jump in strength in just the last 40 years — an acceleration the team said tracks the rise in global temperatures linked to human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.
“That’s important because strong El Ninos have much stronger impacts on climate hazards and extremes worldwide,” said study lead author Julia Cole, a paleoclimate scientist at the University of Michigan. “When we set out to answer the question of why this might be happening, we set our data up against a record of global temperature, and we found that the increase in El Nino’s strength closely parallels the rise in global temperature that is due to human causes such as the burning of fossil fuels.”
The study examines El Niño events going back approximately 900 years, drawing on paleoclimate records to compare the strength of historical events. The researchers set their reconstructions against the global temperature record and reported that El Niño intensity rose in close parallel with temperatures attributable to human activity.
El Niños are a temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific that warp weather worldwide and increase extreme events, including heat waves, floods in some places and droughts in others. The phenomena can cost trillions of dollars in damage.
The findings come as a strong El Niño that formed two months ago is forecast to be the biggest on record in coming months.