Climate models around the world continue to warn of the potential for an El Niño to develop later this year — a pattern of warming oceans in the Pacific that can increase the risk of catastrophic weather events around the world. Some models are raising the possibility of an extreme or “super El Niño” later this year, marked by very high temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean around the equator. The last extreme El Niño in 2016 helped push global temperatures to their highest on record, fueled by human-caused global warming that has triggered floods, droughts and disease outbreaks. Australian Bureau of Meteorology in a Tuesday update, he said, that all seven models it examined – including models from weather agencies in the UK, Japan and the US – showed sea surface temperatures would exceed the El Niño threshold by August. But the agency and climatologists warned that forecasts are much less reliable during the autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and the outlook should be “viewed with some caution”. There is a 50 per cent chance that El Niño will develop by the end of the year, the agency said. The hallmark of El Niños is an increase in sea surface temperatures of at least 0.8°C above the long-term average in the central equatorial Pacific. Extreme El Niños have temperatures in this area 2°C above average.

Dr. Mike McPhaden