El Niño is here and its effects will be no child’s play
El Niño has officially arrived and with it sensationalist headlines about temperature thresholds, extreme weather and destruction. “However, it is important to remember that climate change isn’t a strictly linear process and El Niño simply highlights the ups and downs in what is a generally warming trend dictated by climate change,” says CMCC researcher Leone Cavicchia, as he explains what ENSO is, how it impacts local and global weather, and what to expect now that it has arrived.
In recent months, surging temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific led meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) center to declare that an El Niño year was imminent. On the morning of July 8, this went from prediction to reality as NOAA announced that: “El Niño conditions are present and are expected to gradually strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2023–24.”
This has set off alarm bells as record warm years, such as that of 2016, which ranks as the hottest on record, and an intensification of extreme events often coincide with powerful El Niño cycles.
What is the El Niño Southern Oscillation
El Niño is just one of three phases of a climate pattern known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation — or ENSO for short — with the other two known as La Niña, and the neutral phase.
The term El Niño first came into use as far back as the 16th century when colonists in Peru noticed a curious climatic phenomenon that brought a juxtaposition of abundance in crop yields on land — due to greater than usual rainfall — and destruction at sea — as uncharacteristically warm and nutrient scarce waters caused fish stocks to plummet.
Although coming at seemingly irregular intervals and lasting for varying periods of time, the phenomenon always made itself obvious in the coastal towns of Peru around December, leading local fishermen to associate it with Christmas and hence give it the name El Niño.
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