UN urges world to prepare for El Niño-driven extreme heat risk
It also said there is a 90% probability that El Niño’s warming influence will persist and strengthen through November and beyond.
Warm waters spreading across the tropical Pacific are driving the buildup of a major El Niño, the World Meteorological Organisation has confirmed, sharpening fears of higher global temperatures and a fresh surge in extreme weather and heavy rainfall in the months ahead.
The agency said its forecasting models show an 80% chance that above-average temperatures will be recorded across almost the entire globe from June to August.
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It also said there is a 90% probability that El Niño’s warming influence will persist and strengthen through November and beyond.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said the world must hear the World Meteorological Organisation’s message for what it is: an urgent climate warning. He cautioned that El Niño conditions are set to add more heat to an already warming planet.
Read more: Scientists fear rising temperatures may become new normal
Watch: El Niño arriving with 90% certainty, says UN’s Guterres
The ocean warming that underpins El Niño is among the most powerful natural climate cycles on the planet.
The phenomenon is marked by higher sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.
It usually emerges every two to seven years and tends to last for about nine to 12 months.
El Niño generally starts to form between March and June, reaches peak strength between November and February, and often has its clearest effect on global temperatures in the second year after it begins.
There is no evidence that climate change is making El Niño events more frequent or more intense.
But the extra atmospheric warming caused by climate change can magnify the effects that accompany an El Niño.
Conditions shift between El Niño and its cooler counterpart, La Niña, with neutral periods in between.
El Niño conditions could affect global temperature and rainfall patterns
Meteorologists say that while global temperatures are expected to stay elevated this year, next year 2027 is already emerging as a potential hottest year on record.
WMO Secretary General Andrea Celeste Saulo said countries need to brace for a potentially strong El Niño that could deepen drought, trigger heavier rainfall, and raise the risk of heatwaves on land and across the oceans.
The last El Niño, spanning 2023 and 2024, ranked among the five strongest ever recorded and contributed to the record global temperatures seen in 2024.
El Niño typically brings wetter conditions to parts of southern South America, the southern United States, areas of the Horn of Africa and central Asia, while bringing drier weather to Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia and parts of southern Asia.
The unusually warm waters linked to El Niño also tend to energise hurricanes in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.
At the same time, the pattern usually suppresses hurricane development in the Atlantic Basin, where a quieter storm season can have knock-on effects for Ireland.
WMO is warning of above normal temperatures
Forecast maps released by the WMO with its El Niño update indicate that Ireland is likely to see reduced rainfall as a result of the phenomenon.
Ireland was among a wide range of European countries that experienced record-breaking temperatures last month.
Even so, the WMO’s projections suggest that although temperatures in Ireland are likely to run above normal, the country may avoid the most intense warming effects associated with the approaching El Niño event.
Regional climate centres are forecasting “below-normal” rainfall during the crucial June-September rainy season in the northern Greater Horn of Africa, below-average monsoon rainfall in south Asia, and warmer, drier summer conditions in central America.
In the northern hemisphere summer, El Niño-linked warm waters can help power hurricanes in the central and eastern Pacific while holding back their development in the Atlantic Ocean.
The WMO said it hopes the early warning will help governments and industries prepare, particularly in climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water management, energy and health.
Additional reporting AFP
