El nino effect

LONDON, June 8(Reuters) - Countries are racing to prepare for extreme weather later this year as the world tips into an El Nino — a natural climate phenomenon that fuels tropical cyclones in the Pacific and boosts rainfall and flood risk in parts of the Americas and elsewhere. On Thursday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that an El Nino is now underway. The past three years have been dominated by the cooler La Nina pattern. Scientists say this year looks particularly worrying. The last time a strong El Nino was in full swing, in 2016, the world saw its hottest year on record. Meteorologists expect that this El Nino, coupled with excess warming from climate change, will see the world Experts are also concerned about what is going on in the ocean. An El Nino means that waters in the Eastern Pacific are warmer than usual. But even before this El Nino began, in May, the average global sea surface temperature was about 0.1C (0.2F) higher than any other on record. That could supercharge extreme weather. "We're in unprecedented territory," said Michelle L'Heureux, a meteorologist with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. Graphics to help explain on how El Nino works. Two diagrams showing climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean for neutral and el nino conditions. This year's El Nino could lead to global economic losses of $3 trillion, according to Governments in vulnerable countries are taking note. Peru has Here is how El Nino will unfold and s...

After months of anticipation, El Niño has officially arrived. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “Depending on its strength, El Niño can cause a range of impacts, such as increasing the risk of heavy rainfall and droughts in certain locations around the world,” Michelle L’Heureux, climate scientist at the Climate Prediction Center, said in a statement. (Paul Duginski / Los Angeles Times) Indeed, the climate pattern is a major driver of weather conditions worldwide. It is the warm phase of the El Niño-La Niña Southern Oscillation pattern — sometimes referred to as ENSO — and is marked by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, which occurs on average every two to seven years. There is an 84% chance the system will be of moderate strength, and a 56% chance it will become a strong event at its peak, forecasters said. “Typically, moderate to strong El Niño conditions during the fall and winter result in wetter-than-average conditions from Southern California to along the Gulf Coast and drier-than-average conditions in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley,” the advisory said. “El Niño winters also bring better chances for warmer-than-average temperatures across the northern tier of the country.” But human-caused climate change can exacerbate or mitigate some of its effects, L’Heureux said, including setting El Niño conditions are present and are expected to gradually strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter ...

El Niño is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. El Niño is the “warm phase” of a larger phenomenon called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). La Niña, the “cool phase” of ENSO, is a pattern that describes the unusual cooling of the region’s surface waters. El Niño and La Niña are considered the ocean part of ENSO, while the Southern Oscillation is its atmospheric changes. El Niño has an impact on ocean temperatures, the speed and strength of ocean currents, the health of coastal fisheries, and local weather from Australia to South America and beyond. El Niño events occur irregularly at two- to seven-year intervals. However, El Niño is not a regular cycle, or predictable in the sense that ocean tides are. El Niño was recognized by fishers off the coast of Peru as the appearance of unusually warm water. We have no real record of what indigenous Peruvians called the phenomenon, but Spanish immigrants called it El Niño, meaning “the little boy” in Spanish. When capitalized, El Niño means the Christ Child, and was used because the phenomenon often arrived around Christmas. El Niño soon came to describe irregular and intense climate changes rather than just the warming of coastal surface waters. Led by the work of Sir Gilbert Walker in the 1930s, climatologists determined that El Niño occurs simultaneously with the Southern Oscillation. The Southern Oscillation is a change in air pressure over the trop...