Madrid (EFE) caused by humans will add this phenomenon of ocean warming.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climatic phenomenon consists of two phases -the cold one, called “La Niña”, and the warm one, known as “El Niño”- and represents “the most important temperature variation globally”. , as explained to EFE Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change service, the satellite measurement program of the European Union.
This physicist specifies that the ENSO oscillation, although it alternates between a cold and a warm phase, is not regular or necessarily cyclical, as are other climatic phenomena, and alleges that there may be several consecutive years in the same phase, as in fact has occurred in the last three years with La Niña, which has just ended.
The National Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States declared this cold phase over in March and now, in a neutral ENSO period -in which there is no La Niña but El Niño has not yet arrived-, predicts that there is a 62% chance that El Niño will settle between May and July of this year, and an 80% chance that it will do so in the fall.
Precisely the end of La Niña and the development of El Niño -together with global warming caused by man- is one of the arguments that specialists offer to explain the historical maximum temperature of the marine surface registered at the beginning of April, when the oceans marked 21.1 ºC on average, surpassing the previous record of 21 ºC, reached in 2016.
catastrophic phenomena
El Niño increases the temperature of the ocean surface -which can rise by at least 0.8ºC in the tropical region of the central Pacific-, a warming that alters the variation in precipitation throughout the planet and, according to Buontempo, increases the risk of phenomena extremes such as droughts and floods.
This expert clarifies that the consequences of El Niño will mainly affect the Southeast Asian region and Australia, but also parts of Latin America and the African continent and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the world.
For example, he points out that El Niño can affect the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic, since it “modulates the direction of the wind in the upper atmosphere.”
Climate change
Although they are phenomena that can be perceived as independent, Buontempo clarifies that climate change has an impact on El Niño and vice versa, and maintains that “both in terms of temperature and rainfall, the extremes that we are going to see during El Niño or La Niña They will be stronger than they have been up to now.”
Overall, the last eight years have been the warmest in human history and “what is truly surprising”, for this specialist, is that many of these have coincided with La Niña, the phase of the ENSO phenomenon that cools the waters. from Pacific.
“Normally, the global temperature tends to be lower in these La Niña years and even so we have had temperature extremes, which indicates that the global warming trend is very strong,” explains the scientist.
However, the greatest heat peaks have occurred during El Niño (in especially warm years such as 1998 or 2016, for example), points out Buontempo, and it is foreseeable that in the coming months -at the end of 2023 or already in 2024- New highs in global mean temperature.
“If we add the effect of El Niño to this global warming trend, it is very likely that we will have a significant peak,” warns the specialist.