As a kid, I loved hanging out in my oldest sister’s room because she had a TV. I would then slouch on her bed and watch what she was looking at. It was – late 90’s – mostly MTV or some daily soap.
But then my sister’s high school exams were coming up. One of them in geography – and I remember very well that we watched a documentary about it. It showed the Pacific, graphics showing ocean currents glowing red, parched soil, and flooding in areas of the world very far from my home and also very far from each other. I was fascinated just by the name of the phenomenon that was being described: El Niño, the Christ Child. But also about how it affects the whole world and that no one could really explain it.
As a quick reminder: El Niño is an irregular and anomalous warming of the tropical Pacific that affects the entire global climate. Among other things, there is often extreme drought in Australia and South Asia and at the same time extreme rain in North and South America. All in all, El Niño makes it above all: warmer.
El Niño raises temperatures that are already too high
At the time, I didn’t see it as particularly threatening, but as a natural phenomenon.
It’s different today. Because when El Niño occurs, temperatures that are already too high will rise. Through climate change, we humans have turned a natural phenomenon into an adversary that is more dangerous than it needs to be.
The new report from the World Weather Organization (WMO) was published on Wednesday of this week. This forecasts global temperature trends over the next five years. It states that there is a 66 percent chance that we will see at least one year by 2027 when the global temperature will be more than 1.5 degrees above normal pre-industrial levels.
One reason for this will probably be a new El Niño developing in the coming months. At least that’s what the WMO predicts. The good news is that this also means that we do not yet have to expect the 1.5-degree limit agreed in the Paris climate agreement to be exceeded permanently, but only temporarily. But even such a temporary overshoot was still very unlikely in 2015. A lot has happened since then, or not enough, depending on the situation.
The WMO report also reads rather gloomy otherwise: The probability that one of the next five years will be the warmest ever measured is 98 percent. And the Arctic is projected to warm three times faster than the rest of the world.
Incidentally, El Niño also has a sister: The La Niña phenomenon has had a cooling effect on the world, which has been felt for the past three years. But apart from the fact that La Niña also has serious effects (the long-lasting drought in the Horn of Africa is one of them), the past eight years have still been the warmest on record. So La Niña can’t really help us either. We have to do that ourselves.
(This text is from the weekly Newsletter climate friday you here for free can order.)