The current El Niño climate phenomenon will probably bring “unprecedented” average temperatures on the surface of several areas of the planet until next June, specifically the Bay of Bengal, the Philippines, the Caribbean Sea, the South China Sea and areas of the Amazon and Alaska.
This is suggested by several researchers in an article published in the journal Scientific Reports. The study indicates that there is a probability of close to 90% that global surface temperature records will occur until June, in a scenario of a moderate or strong El Niño episode.
The authors recall that the Niño-Southern Oscillation, centered in the tropical Pacific, is a key driver of climate variability around the world. Both its warm phase (El Niño) and cold phase (La Niña) influence climatic conditions. The heat released into the atmosphere from the western Pacific during an El Niño event causes an accelerated increase in global average annual surface temperatures.
Congwen Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences and colleagues modeled the effects of the current seasonal El Niño (July 2023 to June 2024) on regional variation in mean surface air temperatures from the average between 1951 and 1980. They used that period to ensure that the typical El Niño peak, common between November and January, was included.
In a moderate El Niño scenario, models predict record surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal and the Philippines. With a strong El Niño event, the Caribbean Sea, the South China Sea, and areas of the Amazon and Alaska would also experience record average surface temperatures.
Under a moderate scenario, the average surface would warm between 1.03 and 1.10 degrees above the average between 1951 and 1980, while that range would be between 1.06 and 1.20 degrees in the strong scenario.
The authors emphasize that these temperature records challenge the current capacity of regions to cope with the consequences of excess heat and can lead to a significant increase in the probability of extreme weather events (such as forest fires, tropical cyclones and heat waves ), especially in oceanic and coastal areas where the greater heat capacity of the ocean causes climatic conditions to persist for long periods of time.
