Experts warn that the El Niño weather phenomenon could return in extreme form in 2023. In combination with global warming, new heat records could be reached.
Munich – There are increasing signs that an extreme weather phenomenon is returning: El Niño could be coming back in 2023 – with consequences that would then also be felt in Germany. Some researchers are already warning of an impending “Super El Niño” event that could push temperatures to record highs in 2023 and 2024 – including Dr. Mike McPhaden from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the online portal The Inertia.
2023 could be a Super El Niño year – with global repercussions
Also the German Weather Service (DWD) sees an increased likelihood that 2023 will be an El Niño year. “All models point to this,” says Dr. Kristina Fröhlich on request from merkur.de from IPPEN.MEDIA. But she doesn’t want to talk about a Super El Niño just yet. “I would still be cautious, even if our system basically looks like an El Niño will come in the fall.” However, it is still difficult to make precise predictions in this regard in the spring, she explains. There will be more clarity in June.
What does El Nino mean?
The name El Niño (Spanish for ‘child’) is derived from the Christ child, because the phenomenon usually occurs in South America around Christmas time. What initially sounds harmless can have serious climatic consequences. For fishermen, El Niño years also mean economic problems in particular, since the high water temperatures off the coast of Peru mean that their livelihood, the schools of fish, are absent. It was also fishermen who first noticed the cyclically occurring weather deviation and gave it the biblically inspired name.
El Niño occurs at regular intervals, averaging four years
About every three to five years, El Niño changes the ocean currents in the Pacific. Colder water masses are displaced by warmer ones, causing the surface water to warm up. This water then also releases heat into the atmosphere – with serious consequences for the global weather situation. Even in completely different corners of the earth, El Niño makes itself felt through heavy rain, flooding or extreme drought. The expert explains that 2016, the hottest year since records began, was also driven by a particularly strong El Niño.
According to the German weather service, all models speak for an El Niño 2023
Although the water temperatures off the Peruvian coast have already reached record levels, in the actual El Niño region, which is more in the central tropical Pacific, conditions are still neutral, according to Fröhlich. From a scientific point of view, it is only a real El Niño when temperatures are continuously measured over several consecutive months that are at least 0.5 degrees Celsius above the average climate.
El Niño 2023 could result in even more extreme heat waves than 2022
The probability that it will happen between June and August 2023 is loud World Weather Organization (WMO) currently 55 percent. If that actually happens, it could also affect Central Europe and Germany. Some experts are already warning that there will be even more extreme heat waves in 2023 and 2034 than in the summer of 2022, when the highest warning level applied in a number of places and heat records were broken. In some cases, this resulted in fires and extreme drought.
The last three years were actually “cold years” due to La Niña – but heat records were still set
In terms of El Niño, the last three years were actually cold years, explains weather expert Fröhlich. Because we were dealing with El Niño’s cooler counterpart “La Niña”, a cold ocean current that cools the Pacific Ocean. The fact that temperature records and severe storms have recently occurred despite this natural cooling of the ocean could be an indication that the global heat problem will be exacerbated by the combination of global warming and additional El Niño, as Fröhlich also suspects.
Droughts, floods, storms due to El Niño 2023 – “We have to buckle up”
Another cool La Niña year is very unlikely, according to James Hansen of Columbia University in New York, as he wrote last fall. “We’re due,” McPhaden also warns, referring primarily to the average four-year cycle in which an El Niño occurs. “If that happens, we have to buckle up,” he says. In his opinion, the foreseeable consequences – extreme droughts, floods, heat waves, storms – will be felt worldwide. For this, however, it must first be confirmed that there will actually be an El Niño in autumn or winter 2023.
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