Category Archives: El Niño southern oscillation

‘We are waiting with bated breath’: Super El Niño forecast could make 2027 hottest year on record, BoM says

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Most Australian capital cities have at least 80% chance of unusually warm and dry spring as climatologists watch developing system with increasing alarm

The El Niño climate phenomenon linked to record global temperatures and now locked in place in the Pacific Ocean could develop into the strongest on record, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.

Climatologists are watching the strengthening El Niño with increasing alarm, saying the forecasts from climate models in the coming months are “mind blowing” and “astounding”.

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Historic El Nino able to supercharge extreme weather looks increasingly likely – researchers

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Models show overwhelming chance that this year’s El Niño to rank among largest going back to 1950

El Niño is strengthening and the risks of a historic event with the power to supercharge extreme weather around the world are rising, according to the latest analysis from the US National Weather Service.

Models show there is now an 81% chance that a very strong El Niño “that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950” will develop before the end of this year, forecasters said in an advisory released Thursday. There is almost near certainty – a 97% probability – that the conditions will persist through spring 2027.

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Norfolk Island’s unique corals under triple threat from disease, El Niño and now government-approved dredging

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Exclusive: Most of the island’s corals are likely to be species that have not been formally described by science, researcher says

Scientists fear unique corals that fringe Australia’s remote Norfolk Island could disappear because of a triple threat of disease, El Niño and a federal government plan to dredge a neighbouring shipping channel.

A failure to manage sediment and pollution washing into bays from cattle farming, cleared land along with wastewater has been blamed for widespread disease and outbreaks of algae over the corals.

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Papua New Guinea at risk of food shortages as El Niño brings frost and drought

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Oxfam predicts PNG will be worst-hit country in Pacific from the weather pattern, with up to 3 million people affected nationwide

Families across Papua New Guinea’s Highlands are facing depleted harvests and the threat of hunger after the El Niño weather pattern brought frost and prolonged dry conditions that have destroyed food gardens providing sustenance and income for thousands of households.

The effects of El Niño emerged in recent weeks, bringing drought conditions, falling water levels and frost that are threatening food security in some of the country’s most agriculturally productive regions.

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Tornadoes rip through central US while extreme heat and humidity creep into the north-east

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One man died in Iowa after a tree fell on him as nearly 700 severe weather events were recorded over three days

An Illinois man whose home was destroyed by a tornado on Thursday was pulled from the rubble by a police officer and a photojournalist, who captured the terrifying storm and subsequent rescue in dramatic video footage.

Scott Lasker, who describes himself as a storm chaser, recorded the tornado ripping through the town of Streator and was filming the damage it inflicted when he came across the man trapped in the debris of his house.

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El Niño expected to develop in coming months, bringing hotter and drier weather to eastern Australia

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BoM and other agencies expect transition to the first El Niño since spring 2023 sometime during winter

Australia should prepare for an imminent El Niño, with the Bureau of Meteorology and other agencies forecasting that the weather phenomenon is likely to develop in the coming months.

“The models are really aligning now,” Felicity Gamble, a senior BoM climatologist, said. “We are expecting a transition to El Niño sometime during winter.”

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Australia’s south-east set for drier and hotter winter as BoM forecasts potential El Niño

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Queensland and NSW set for lower than usual rainfall in May, June and July, while temperatures in most of the country likely to be higher than normal

Large parts of south-east Australia look set for drier and hotter conditions over the next three months as a potential El Niño weather phenomenon takes shape in the Pacific Ocean.

Much of Queensland and New South Wales are forecast to have lower than usual rainfall in May, June and July, with almost the entire country likely to experience hotter than average maximum temperatures.

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Hottest January on record mystifies climate scientists

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EU monitor says global temperatures were 1.75C above preindustrial levels, extending run of unprecedented highs

A run of record-breaking global temperatures has continued, even with a La Niña weather pattern cooling the tropical Pacific.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month was the warmest January on record, with surface – air temperatures 1.75C above preindustrial levels.

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‘I have lost everything’: southern Africa battles hunger amid historic drought

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Crops have failed in several countries, with 27m people at risk of hunger according to World Food Programme

Emmanuel Himoonga paced his dry field, picking up stalks of maize that had been bleached almost to bone white.

The 61-year-old chief of Shakumbila, a mainly agricultural community of about 7,000 people roughly 70 miles west of Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, had seen droughts before.

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Global heating is making El Niño and La Niña forecasts less reliable, BoM says

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Exclusive: Meteorologists say climate change and the amount of heat being added to the oceans make predictions based on the past less reliable

The Bureau of Meteorology is shifting the way it communicates about climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, because global heating is making predictions based on the past less reliable.

This week the bureau kept the country on a “La Niña watch” and said if the climate system in the Pacific does develop, it’s likely to be short-lived and weak.

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Australia put on La Niña watch by Bureau of Meteorology as Pacific sea surface temperatures cool

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Weather bureau says there is now a 50/50 chance of La Niña forming this year

Australia has been placed on La Niña watch by the Bureau of Meteorology with early signs the climate pattern linked to cooler and wetter conditions across most of the country could form later this year.

The bureau said there was now a 50/50 chance of La Niña forming this year with sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific steadily cooling since December.

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Kenya flood death toll rises as more torrential rain forecast

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Total deaths reach 76 and more than 130,000 displaced as weeks of flooding also affects east African neighbours

Seventy-six people in Kenya have died because of flooding triggered by torrential downpours since March, the government has said, warning residents “to brace for even heavier rainfall”.

Kenya and its east African neighbours have been battered by stronger than usual rain in recent weeks, compounded by the El Niño weather system.

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Global heating and urbanisation to blame for severity of UAE floods, study finds

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World Weather Attribution group says intensified El Niño effects caused torrential rain, but rules out cloud seeding as cause

Fossil fuels and concrete combined to worsen the “death trap” conditions during recent record flooding in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, a study has found.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution team said downpours in El Niño years such as this one had become 10-40% heavier in the region as a result of human-cased climate disruption, while a lack of natural drainage quickly turned roads into rivers.

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Lethal heatwave in Sahel worsened by fossil fuel burning, study finds

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Deaths from record temperatures in Mali reportedly led to full morgues turning away bodies this month


The deadly protracted heatwave that filled hospitals and mortuaries in the Sahel region of Africa earlier this month would have been impossible without human-caused climate disruption, a new analysis has revealed.

Mali registered the hottest day in its history on 3 April as temperatures hit 48.5C in the south-western city of Kayes. Intense heat continued across a wide area of the country for more than five days and nights, giving vulnerable people no time for recovery.

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BoM declares the El Niño is over and another La Niña could be on the way

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Seven months after an El Niño associated with hotter and drier weather got under way, conditions have returned to neutral

The Bureau of Meteorology has declared the El Niño weather event of 2023-24 to be over, with odds increasing that its cooler counterpart, the La Niña, will return by the coming spring.

Conditions in the central equatorial Pacific have now returned to neutral conditions, about seven months after the El Niño had got under way, the bureau said on Tuesday.

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Weather tracker: Gulf braced for thunderstorms

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Heavy rain forecast in Saudi Arabia and UAE as France and Spain cool down after weekend of high temperatures

Intense thunderstorms are forecast across parts of the Gulf on Monday and Tuesday, bringing very high rainfall to the region and a significant flooding risk in parts.

Low pressure over the Arabian peninsula will deepen on Monday while a flow of moist tropical air moves into the region, significantly enhancing the production of showers as a result.

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Zimbabwean president declares state of disaster due to drought

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Emmerson Mnangagwa says country needs $2bn of aid as severe dry spell caused by El Niño afflicts southern Africa

Zimbabwe has declared a national disaster over a drought caused by the climate event known as El Niño and President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said the country needs $2bn in aid to help millions of people who are going hungry.

The severe dry spell is wreaking havoc across southern Africa.

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El Niño forecast to drive record heat from the Amazon to Alaska in 2024

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Coastal areas facing ‘enormous and urgent climate crisis’ as event supercharges human-caused global heating, scientists say

The current climate event known as El Niño is likely to supercharge global heating and deliver record-breaking temperatures from the Amazon to Alaska in 2024, analysis has found.

Coastal areas of India by the Bay of Bengal and by the South China Sea, as well as the Philippines and the Caribbean, are also likely to experience unprecedented heat in the period to June, the scientists said, after which El Niño may weaken.

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‘Life-threatening’ storm system batters California, with flooding and high winds

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First-ever hurricane-force wind warning along coast, with millions of people under flood watches and power out for close to a million

An enormous atmospheric river-fueled storm unleashed rain and furious winds across California on Sunday, leaving destruction and hazards in its wake.

Howling winds tore down power lines and trees, and scattered debris in communities across the state, prompting officials to issue the first-ever hurricane-force wind warning along the coast. By late afternoon, streets in both northern and southern regions of California were left submerged, with far more rain on the way.

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Weather tracker: first red cyclone warning for Réunion since 1989

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Cyclone Belal is expected to remain a strong storm through the coming week

Active weather is expected to affect northern Australia and parts of the Mascarene Islands in the south Indian Ocean this week, with the monsoon trough a triggering factor in both cases.

The monsoon trough is an area of the Intertropical Convergence Zone that interacts with the larger scale monsoon circulation. This trough is marked by an area of relative minima in sea level pressure, as well as a local maximum of vorticity (a measure of the spin of the atmosphere).

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