The warming El Nino weather phenomenon that peaked in December was one of the five strongest ever recorded, the UN said yesterday, predicting that it would produce above-normal temperatures from now to May.
Although El Nino is now gradually weakening, its impact will continue over the coming months by fueling the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.
Therefore “above normal temperatures are predicted over almost all land areas between March and May,” the WMO said in a quarterly update.
Photo: AFP
El Nino, the large-scale warming of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, typically has the greatest impact on the global climate in the year after it develops, in this instance 2024.
It is a naturally occurring climate pattern typically associated with increased heat worldwide, as well as drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere.
The weather phenomenon occurs on average every two to seven years, and episodes typically last nine to 12 months.
Conditions oscillate between El Nino and its generally cooling opposite La Nina, with neutral conditions in between.
- Sea temperatures ‘worrying’ -
“There is about a 60 percent chance of El Nino persisting during March-May and a 80 percent chance of neutral conditions in April to June,” the WMO said.
There is a chance of La Nina developing later in the year, but the odds are currently uncertain, the WMO said.
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said the record temperatures recorded over recent months were exacerbated by the El Nino effect.
However, it needed to be seen in the context of a climate being changed by human activities.
Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — were chiefly to blame, Saulo said.
“Every month since June 2023 has set a new monthly temperature record — and 2023 was by far the warmest year on record,” she said.
“El Nino has contributed to these record temperatures, but heat-trapping greenhouse gases are unequivocally the main culprit,” she said.
“Ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific clearly reflect El Nino, but sea surface temperatures in other parts of the globe have been persistently and unusually high for the past 10 months,” Saulo added.
“The January 2024 sea-surface temperature was by far the highest on record for January. This is worrying and can not be explained by El Nino alone,” she said.
The current El Nino developed in June last year and was at its strongest between November and January.
It hit a peak of about 2°C above the 1991 to 2020 average sea surface temperature for the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean.
That made it one of the five strongest El Nino events ever.
El Nino events are typically associated with increased rainfall in parts of southern South America, the southern US, the Horn of Africa and central Asia.
It can also cause severe droughts over Australia, Indonesia, parts of southern Asia, Central America and northern South America.
The WMO says the last El Nino was in 2015-2016.
From 2020 to early last year, the world was affected by an unusually protracted La Nina, which lasted for three years.
It was the first so-called triple-dip La Nina of the 21st century and only the third since 1950.
However, its cooling effects did not stop the nine hottest individual years on record all being from 2015 onwards.
The WMO has urged drastic greenhouse gas emissions cuts to combat climate change.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to