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El Niño breaks records; exceeds 1997

http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest- … ng-2015-11

http://gizmodo.com/this-years-godzilla- … 1743300907

http://qz.com/554084/this-el-nino-could … d-history/

https://www.wmo.int/media/content/el-ni … reparation

Background Information

The ongoing El Niño has already been associated with a number of major impacts. These include:

Coral bleaching: Record ocean temperatures, caused in part by El Niño, have contributed to a major coral bleaching event. It began in the north Pacific in summer 2014 and expanded to the south Pacific and Indian oceans in 2015. It is hitting U.S. coral reefs disproportionately hard. NOAA estimates that by the end of 2015, almost 95 percent of U.S. coral reefs will have been exposed to ocean conditions that can cause corals to bleach.

Tropical cyclones: El Niño has contributed to a very active tropical cyclone season in the Western North Pacific and Eastern North Pacific basins. Hurricane Patricia, which made landfall in Mexico on 24 October, was reportedly the most intense tropical cyclone in the western hemisphere. El Niño tends to reduce hurricane activity in the Atlantic and around Australia.

Regional Impacts:

South East Asia: El Niño is typically associated with drought in South East Asia. This has helped fuel wildfires in Indonesia, among the worst on record, which has caused dense haze to cover many parts of Indonesia and other neighbouring countries, with significant repercussions for health.

Pacific Islands: Historically, El Niño has caused reduced rainfall in the southwest Pacific (from southern Papua New Guinea southeast to the southern Cook Islands) and enhanced rainfall in the central and eastern Pacific (e.g. Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tokelau and Nauru). But it also affects the number of tropical cyclones and their preferred tracks, so that there is a risk of extreme rainfall events even where drier than normal conditions are forecast. More information here.

South Asia: Southwest monsoon. The India Meteorological Department reported that the June-September rainfall over India as a whole was 86% of its long period average. El Niño situation is believed to have played a key role in the rainfall deficit, which was successfully forecast by the India Meteorological Department as early as in June 2015.

Eastern Africa: The October to December rainfall season is expected to be highly influenced by the El-Nino phenomenon which is usually associated with enhanced rainfall within the equatorial sector of the Greater Horn of Africa during the October – December period.  However, local systems and the sea surface temperature patterns of the Indian Ocean impart highly on the influence of El-Nino to the region’s seasonal rainfall performance. More information here.

Southern Africa; A number of countries in southern Africa are reporting below average rainfall leading to drought conditions and fears of food insecurity. El Niño is a contributory, but not the only, factor.

South America: El Niño has a major impact on a number of countries in South America. For instance, in the 1997-98 El Niño, central Ecuador and Peru suffered rainfall more than 10 times normal, which caused flooding, extensive erosion and mudslides with loss of lives, destruction of homes and infrastructure, damage to food supplies . In Peru about 10% of the health facilities were damaged. National meteorological services throughout the region have been very active in advising governments on preparedness measures to try to limit damages from this year’s El Niño.

0176

Member

From: Brazil

Joined: 2021-09-05

Posts: 3,174

Re: El Niño breaks records; exceeds 1997

No wonder it's been raining so much here recently. Every month there are alarms about potential floods

Onjit

Member

Joined: 2015-02-15

Posts: 9,710

Website

Re: El Niño breaks records; exceeds 1997

Goddamnit ever since Al Gore invented Climate Change the weather has been getting worse and worse.

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