This winter could be colder and snowier than usual – it’s down to this year’s El Niño weather phenomenon, which forecasters expect to be the strongest since 1950, says Sarah Knapton in The Daily Telegraph.
El Niño is a climate pattern linked to major events such as monsoons in India, heavy rain and storms in North America and Europe, and floods in Australia. Since detailed records began in the early 1950s, El Niño has struck every 15 to 20 years, with the last “really powerful one” during the winter of 1997-1998, says Jeremy Plester in The Times.
Another is now overdue. If it is a big one, 2016 is likely to prove a “turbulent year” for global finance, particularly in the insurance and commodities markets, with the risks of heat, typhoons, floods and crop failures increasing globally. In 1997 the cost to the global economy was put at around half a trillion dollars.
Some countries have already been hit, says The Economist. Thailand is rationing water. Peru is in a state of emergency because of mudslides. The Panana Canal’s water levels are so low that traffic is restricted. The global impact could be “devastating due to disruption to trade and harvests”. This in turn could fuel conflict; Columbia University’s Earth Institute found that El Niño doubles the risk of civil wars in 90 tropical countries.
It’s not all bad, says Plester. It should inhibit hurricane activity in the North Atlantic, for example. And it may bring respite to California, which has seen a record-breaking four-year drought, says Tom Bawden in The Independent. But the big picture isn’t good.
El Niño could push the average global temperature to a third consecutive record in 2016, and it may not stop there. As Professor Scaife of the Met Office Hadley Centre says: “these natural shifts… have happened for millennia, but their effect on the temperature is becoming even more profound because of the rising volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere”.