“Super” El Niño will bring topsy-turvy weather to much of the globe
Weather anomaly could be mightiest on record
If you want to build a snowman this winter, you’ll be better off in Salt Lake City than Boston.
Or, if you’re taking the kids to sunny Florida’s Disney World over Christmas break, bring a raincoat.
And you might have already noticed that there have been no Atlantic hurricanes so far this year, even at September’s height of the storm season.
That’s because of a chaotic weather phenomenon called El Niño, where Mother Nature temporarily turns up the thermostat in the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean. It disrupts the winter weather for much of the globe, and this year has earned the moniker “Super” El Niño, due to the forecasts of record high water temperatures which are already affecting some weather patterns and more is to come.
It is gearing up – with a 75% chance – to be the strongest El Niño since record keeping began in 1950, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on Sept. 16.
Scientists aren’t exactly sure why it occurs. But in a recent statement NOAA described the anomaly as “arguably the most influential climate driver on Earth.”
Editor’s Picks
“I wouldn’t call it all doom and gloom,” said Northeastern University’s Samuel Munoz, an associate professor of marine and environmental sciences, but it will create topsy-turvy weather across parts of the world.
It brings everything from droughts and wildfires to floods, heavy snows and milder winter days, depending on where you live, Munoz said.
What happens is that the equatorial waters in the Pacific Ocean, which are normally driven westward by the tradewinds, are blown eastward by a reverse in the winds. It started in June and those winds caused the extra warm water to accumulate along parts of the western coasts of Central and South America, Mexico and California, Munoz said.
That allows the sea-surface water temperature to heat up by a few degrees – passing the threshold of 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average, NOAA said in a release. The ocean heat then cooks up the upper atmosphere’s jet streams which basically loop the weather around parts of the globe.
Across the U.S., it means there is a potential poor skiing season in the U.S. East Coast and Appalachia Mountains, but it might deliver record snow to the southern Rockies, according to the National Weather Service. As for the Gulf Coast, and especially Florida, winter thunderstorms will erase the typical endless blue skies and also heavy rains and beach erosion should be expected in Southern California.
And it’s already driving wind shears in the Atlantic, tearing apart tropical storms aimed at the Americas before they can ripen into hurricanes. An average year would typically see seven hurricanes, according to the National Hurricane Center.
This year there have been zero.
For London and western Europe, the Super El Niño spells a wetter winter with potential floods. And while Peru is seeing record heatwaves, in Indonesia, severe drought is expected with a sharp drop in rainfall and threatening a much higher risk of widespread wildfires, according to NOAA.
Shipping traffic through the Panama Canal might be disrupted as drought in Central America could reduce water reservoirs needed to move ships back and forth between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
But it’s not all negative news. When it comes to oversaturation, more water generally brings favorable growing conditions and adequate moisture to the U.S. Midwest’s Corn Belt, a major American agricultural region.
So, whether Super El Niño is “good, bad, or ugly depends on the context,” said Auroop Ganguly, a distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern. What tends to be unsurprising is that “overall humans are usually better at dealing with the expected and the predictable,” he said.
