According to Reuters, according to a report released by the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the 6th, after nearly three years of La Niña, El Niño has returned and may trigger extreme weather later this year.
The picture shows a large tree uprooted due to a winter storm in Sacramento, California, United States, on January 2023, 1, local time.
"In May, a weak El Niño occurred as sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean rose and exceeded average," the report said. ”
El Niño is a large-scale and sustained abnormal warming of the eastern and central equatorial Pacific waters, also known as "warm events", which tend to bring about an increase in the global average temperature.
El Niño means warmer waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean than usual. But this year, before El Niño began, global sea surface temperatures were 0.1°C warmer than usual. This means that extreme weather can be intensified.
El Niño last occurred in 2016, the hottest year on record. As previously reported by Reuters, El Niño could exacerbate the effects of global warming, breaking high temperature records in 2023 or 2024.
Most experts refer to the judgment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) to confirm that El Niño has begun. The BOM standard is relatively stricter, compared to NOAA's 0.5°C warming, BOM takes the average temperature increase of 0.8°C in key waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean as the standard. On the 6th, BOM said that there is a 70% chance of El Niño this year.
Under El Niño control, extreme weather such as heavy rainfall in South America and drought in Australia may occur. This will affect agricultural production from the Americas to Asia.
According to Reuters, a study published in May estimated that El Niño could cost the global economy $5 trillion this year.