Experts say the hotter weather pattern might push the Earth into unprecedented territory next year.
In an aerial view, flooding continues to cover much of the Salinas Valley after a series of powerful storms caused the overflow of the Salinas River on January 18, 2022 near Chualar, California.The last three years were objectively hot, numbering among the warmest since records began in 1880. But the scorch factor of recent years was actually tempered by a climate pattern that slightly cools the globe, “La Niña.
This year and next, La Niña might give way to its hotter counterpart, El Niño. Distinguished by warm surface waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean, the weather pattern has consequences for temperatures, drought, and rainfall around the world. The planet hasn’t seen a strong El Niño since 2016 — the hottest year ever recorded — and the next El Niño will occur on top of all the warming that’s occurred since then.
El Niño’s return could further strain sensitive ecosystems, like the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon rainforest, and nudge the planet closer to worrisome tipping points. It might also push the world past a threshold that scientists have been warning about, giving people a temporary glimpse of what it’s like to live on a planet that’s 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial times — a level that could begin to unleash some of the more drastic consequences of climate change.
“Looking back at past years when you’ve had El Niños, we have seen those global temperatures kind of boost themselves, sometimes significantly, depending on how big El Niño was,” said Tom Di Liberto, a climate scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. El Niño is expected to arrive later this year, and the warmer weather pattern could continue to build up through 2024,
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