“An El Niño episode is expected in the coming months and this, combined with human-caused climate change, will cause global temperatures to rise to levels never before reached,” said the climate specialist.
“This will have major repercussions on health, food safety, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared,” he reiterated.
El Niño is a natural weather phenomenon generally associated with rising temperatures, greater drought in certain parts of the world, and heavy rains in others.
Typically, El Niño causes global temperatures to rise the year after it arrives, i.e. 2024 for this cycle.
The WMO recently estimated that El Niño could begin to manifest itself in the coming months, coinciding with the southern winter and the northern hemisphere summer.
La Niña phenomenon, the opposite of El Niño and why it is no longer enough
El Niño last occurred in 2018-2019 and gave way to a particularly long episode of almost three years of La Niña, which causes opposite effects and in particular a drop in temperatures.
Despite the dampening effect of La Niña, the last eight years have been the hottest on record and 2016 stops the record.
Greenhouse gases—the top three are CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide—concentrating at record levels in the atmosphere, trap heat and cause temperatures to rise.
With information from AFP and EFE
