Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Wait is It’s finally over: El Niño has officially begun.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that the biannual weather phenomenon has arrived. Congratulations if you took the pre-July 1 forecast on Calc.
Prediction markets They’re not the only places that frequently experience El Niño. The phenomenon – characterized by hotter-than-normal waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean – has a major impact on the weather in almost every corner of the world. With this year’s iteration expected to be among the strongest ever recorded, the impacts are likely to be particularly severe.
There are several ways to measure El Niño, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) threshold hinges on temperatures 1 degree F (0.5 C) above average for a three-month period in a particular part of the Pacific Ocean. (This zone is called NINO3.4 if you want to impress and/or bore someone at a party.) The Pacific Ocean has surpassed this threshold thanks to a rapid rise in temperatures in record weeks. But there are other signs of El Niño, including a Sea level rise It reaches up to 7 inches (18 cm) in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, thanks to winds blowing from the west that cause water to accumulate there.
The shift in ocean temperatures, in turn, affects the atmosphere at a regional level, which then leads to indirect impacts on weather around the world, from increasing the odds of wet weather in the southwestern United States to reducing the odds of active activity. Atlantic hurricane season. Drought is also becoming more likely in places like Indonesia and the Sahel region of Africa. El Niño also releases additional heat into the atmosphere, warming an already hot planet. In essence, El Niño is like a car engine: start it and the atmosphere moves.
The main question now is how strong El Niño will be this year and how this will affect its effects. The answers seem to be “very much” and “quite a bit.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) gives this year’s El Niño a 63% chance of exceeding the 3.6 degree Fahrenheit threshold, which qualifies it as a super El Niño. But climate models are optimistic that this threshold can be exceeded by a wide margin. Some have temperatures exceeding 5.4 F, making this the strongest El Niño on record.
There were four other instances of El Niño reaching the superthreshold, all of which led to widespread problems around the world. To revisit the car analogy, if your average El Niño resembles the engine in a Toyota Prius, a super El Niño is closer to that of a car. Ferrari los.
The 1982-1983 event – the first of its kind in recorded history – caused Lake Mead to flood, while the 1997-98 version caused the worst drought on record in Indonesia. The most recent recurrence in 2023-2024 caused the worst drought in South Africa in 100 years, leading to… 61 million people Need food assistance. All the heat in the ocean also erodes coral reefs Already struggling to adapt To the rise in temperatures resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.
And in fact, this is the other issue that affects what will happen with El Niño this year. The world has never been hotter in human history. As El Niño continues, there will likely be a wave of warming ahead this year and next. If I were a betting person, I would definitely count 2026 as among the hottest years on record.
