Climate change is making El Niño stronger and more dangerous than ever before, scientists warn.
In a new study, researchers have revealed that El Niño events have become nearly 40% stronger over the past four decades than they were in the preindustrial era.
The finding comes as the world is in the grips of a historic “super” El Niño. While daily average sea surface temperatures such as the Amazon rainforest.
“El Niño is a really big source of climate extremes, and so if it’s getting stronger, the impacts are getting stronger. Impacts like droughts, floods, wildfire and food insecurity,” Cole said.
In the short term, the combination of climate change and El Niño could bring significant strain to our warming planet.
“The question is not whether the current El Niño is going to happen, but how bad is it going to be, and how bad will the impacts be?” Cole said. “This event is superimposed on global warming, and it’s likely to supercharge the temperature increase that we would normally see from greenhouse gases.”
The findings further underscore the urgent need to mitigate further global warming, Cole noted.
“No country has the resources to be fully protected from these impacts. This is one more reason we need to move away from fossil fuels, the root cause of the problem,” Cole said.
