Were you hot last summer? Prepare to sweat even more for the next five years. The El Nino weather phenomenon has officially begun and is expected to “gradually strengthen” in the coming months, the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation Agency (NOAA) said Thursday.
El Nino is a phenomenon characterized by warmer than normal surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, but it has consequences for the entire planet. It “could lead to new temperature records” in some regions, Michelle L’Heureux, climatologist for NOAA, said in a statement.
Five years of record temperatures
In May, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned that the period 2023-2027 would almost certainly be the hottest on record on Earth, under the combined effect of El Nino and global warming caused by emissions of greenhouse gas. El Nino occurs approximately every two to seven years, and climatologists had been predicting its arrival for this year for several months. The opposite phenomenon, La Niña, which on the contrary tends to cause a drop in temperatures, had been present for three years.
“Depending on its strength, El Nino can cause a series of consequences, such as increasing the risk of heavy rainfall or drought in certain regions of the world,” explained Michelle L’Heureux. “Climate change may exacerbate or mitigate some El Nino-related impacts,” she said. Generally, El Nino tends to moderate hurricane activity in the Atlantic, but favor hurricane activity in the Pacific, according to NOAA.