El Niño: a threat to the world that is on its way to breaking records

The forecasts of the phenomenon of The boy that is already underway does not bring good news. The most powerful climatic event on the planet began about two months earlier than usual and is likely to be of strong intensity, the world’s most important meteorological agencies confirmed a week ago. The Earth, already battered by the effects of climate change, will warm even more. The economy, battered by the pandemic and ongoing conflicts, will face increased levels of pressure.

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El Niño is a natural, temporary and occasional warming of a part of the Pacific that modifies the meteorological patterns on the planet. When talking about global El Niño, all international predictions focus on what happens in zone 3.4 of the Central Pacific, also called the Central Equatorial Pacific.

Although the greatest damage is usually felt in South America in Peru and Ecuador, this event also causes extreme weather events in the rest of the world.

“What El Niño does in the entire Pacific basin is change atmospheric circulation patterns and that causes all precipitation patterns to change on a planetary level. Most of the current projections speak of an 80% probability or more of the occurrence of a moderate to strong El Niño until the winter that begins in December”, tells El Comercio Gino Passalacqua, doctor in Oceanography and specialist in climate sciences and meteorology.

The United States Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has warned that towards the end of the year El Niño is likely to cause anything from tropical cyclones in some parts of the Pacific to heavy rains in South America or droughts in Australia.

El Niño conditions are here, according to the latest ENSO Outlook from @NWSCPC. El Niño is expected to continue into the winter, with the odds of at least a moderate event are about 84%.https://t.co/X80WoUuAi7 pic.twitter.com/FedIzrLFpv

— NOAA Climate.gov (@NOAAClimate) June 8, 2023

Droughts, forest fires, floods, effects on marine life, crops and agricultural production, and power cuts are part of the chain of consequences that this El Niño will bring under its arm in different parts of the world. [ver infografía].

The last declared active El Niño on a global scale formed in 2016 and came with a record heat wave, as well as damage to the economy and ecosystems. And everything indicates that the impact of this would be greater.

(Trade)

More heat

El Niño is generally associated with an increase in the planet’s temperature, which causes greater concern if one takes into account that we are already suffering from the advance of global warming.

The available data leave little room for optimism. Global average temperatures for the first 11 days of June were the highest ever recorded for this period of the year, according to the Copernicus European Climate Change Service (C3S).

With El Niño, the global temperature increases by about 0.2 degrees Celsius, so it is expected that, in the next 12 months, when the climatic phenomenon completes its cycle, the average air temperature will again exceed the mark of 1.5 degrees relative to pre-industrial levels.

If we’re talking about records, experts are already predicting this year to be hotter than 2022 and the fifth or sixth hottest on record.

Heat waves already affect various parts of the world. (Photo: AFP)

blow to the economy

The outlook makes it clear that El Niño will once again affect the world economy and everything indicates that the damage this time would be greater.

“Combined with more extreme weather and higher temperatures due to accelerating climate change, the stage is now set for the world’s costliest El Niño cycle since forecasters began tracking. It also adds to the feared risk of stagflation, in which inflation remains high even as the economy contracts.”, read a recent Bloomberg article.

A World Bank study points out that El Niño is much more costly globally than previously thought, estimating damage in the trillions of dollars. They claim that the 1997-1998 phenomenon cost governments $45 billion.

Dartmouth scientists go further and point out that the same El Niño caused the loss of US$5.7 trillion in world GDP in the following five years. They also estimate that global economic losses for the 21st century will reach US$84 trillion as climate change potentially amplifies the frequency and strength of El Niño.

Passalacqua explains that changes in precipitation patterns mainly affect agriculture because they modify all flowering processes with droughts and the harvest stages do not occur at the same time.

“There is also a serious impact on tourism, but the most affected items are fisheries and agriculture. Another sector that is greatly affected is health because having changes throughout the climate creates a favorable scenario for diseases that normally do not spread so quickly. In Peru, for example, the dengue problem has already gotten out of control. El Niño will always happen and Peru and Ecuador are the countries that are most affected in the region. How to mitigate the effects or even take advantage of them? Taking appropriate measures for the prevention or mitigation of disasters”, adds the expert.

Source: Elcomercio