Saturday, September 26, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
ENVIRONMENT: El Niño Returns, Tamer This Time
Gustavo Capdevila
- The meteorological phenomenon known as El Niño is reappearing this year, but with less force than in 1997- 1998, when it was blamed for 24,000 deaths and damages worth an estimated 34 billion dollars worldwide.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) announced Tuesday that its forecasting models indicate a weak manifestation of El Niño will occur over the next six to nine months in the tropical central and eastern areas of the Pacific Ocean.
The predicted phenomena would be much tamer than the 1997-1998 El Niño, said Michael Coughlan, director WMO World Climate Programme.
“We are seeing some signs of the characteristics of El Niño event developing. However, these changes appear to be relative weak,” Coughlan told the press Tuesday in this Swiss city.
Nevertheless, the official from the WMO, a specialised agency of the United Nations, did not rule out the possibility that, even in its gentler version, El Niño could trigger localised weather events that could cause extensive material harm and loss of life.
In addition to thousands of deaths and costly infrastructure and agricultural damage, the El Niño event three years ago also contributed to the spread of disease among 533,000 people and left six million homeless. Worldwide, it had a direct impact on the lives of 111 million people.
El Niño is characterised by the displacement of warm surface currents from the tropical western Pacific toward the same latitudes along the American coastline.
The warming of the waters in the eastern Pacific leads to changes in atmospheric pressure, which can alter the normal wind and rainfall patterns.
This process, which is repeated every four to six years, is known to cause a reduction in rainfall in Indonesia, and in parts of the Philippines and of Papua New Guinea, as occurred in 1997- 1998.
In contrast, precipitation becomes concentrated in the eastern areas of the Pacific, primarily along the South American coast.
When El Niño dissipated in mid-1998, it gave way to the opposite phenomenon, known as ‘La Niña’, in which the surface waters of the tropical Pacific’s central and eastern areas cooled down.
The currents in the central Pacific “are now starting to become slightly warmer than normal, but only slowly,” explained William Kininmonth, a specialist at Australasian Climate Research.
“Most expert interpretations do no anticipate any rapid warming that would herald the onset of a major El Niño event in the next few months,” stressed Kininmonth.
But the report by the WMO says this finding should not lead to the conclusion that the coming months will not see any major meteorological fluctuations.
Seasonal climate variations have many causes, involving factors other than sea surface temperatures in the Pacific, say the experts. Their attention has been drawn lately to an area of warmer than normal temperatures in the central Indian Ocean.
The WMO reports indicates that this “may have consequences in the coming months for regional climate fluctuations over the Indian Ocean and adjacent continental regions.”
Climatic variations, particularly those caused by global warming, are likely to cause serious financial damage, according to estimates by the insurance companies expected to cover the risks involved.
A study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) calculates that losses averaging 300 billion dollars annually would be caused by frequent tropical cyclones and loss of land due to rising sea levels, which result in damages to fishing and farming, and to freshwater supplies.
But WMO official Coughlan commented that the effects of El Niño itself do not prove disastrous for all regions at the same time.
When several countries in the Southern Hemisphere were being thrashed by El Niño in 1997-1998, the United States economy was experiencing one of the most buoyant moments of the economic expansion that is now ending, said the climate expert.
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ENVIRONMENT: El Niño Returns, Tamer This Time
Gustavo Capdevila
- The meteorological phenomenon known as El Niño is reappearing this year, but with less force than in 1997- 1998, when it was blamed for 24,000 deaths and damages worth an estimated 34 billion dollars worldwide.
(more…)
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