Forecast models suggest the El Niño unfolding in the Pacific Ocean could be the strongest on record, and the people left to live with the fallout are being told to brace for weather they can’t fully predict. Scientists say the real problem isn’t just the storm system itself. It’s what happens when that system hits a planet already running hotter than ever.
Ben Kirtman, dean of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, put it bluntly: “We’re in a bit of uncharted territory.” He said that if this El Niño turns out to be the strongest on record, it raises the question of what a historically strong El Niño will look like stacked on top of the planet’s unprecedented warming. That’s the setup. Ordinary people get the risk. The institutions get the uncertainty.
Who Pays for the Unknown
Scientists told USA TODAY they understand a lot about El Niño and a lot about climate change, but not how the two will interact to influence weather in the United States and around the globe. The unresolved question for this winter is whether the Southeast and California will get their typical rainy winters or super soakers, and whether a drought in Indonesia could be more severe. The forecast machine can name the danger. It can’t soften it.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and founder of WeatherWest.com, said, “We’ve never experienced an extreme El Nino in a climate as warm as the climate is today.” He added, “If El Nino gets us to the 8th or 9th floor, that plus global warming is going to get us to the 10th or 11th floor.” The image is simple enough. The atmosphere keeps climbing, and the people below are expected to absorb the consequences.
Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist recently retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said three El Niño events over the last 50 years were considered extreme: 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16. He said the current El Niño will rival those previous record El Niños, if not exceed them in magnitude. He also said, “With rising global temperatures because of the heat-trapping greenhouse gases being injected into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates, El Niños today aren’t necessarily like the El Niños that we experienced 40 years ago.”
McPhaden said every year in the decade since 2016 has been among the globe’s warmest 10 years on record, according to NOAA and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. He said the current event is already in uncharted territory because of how fast it has taken off and because of how much warmer temperatures are forecast to be by the end of the year. He said, “We’re setting record after record already.”
What the Weather System Is Doing
USA TODAY reported that sea surface temperatures are warmer than normal and in some cases record-warm for this time of year. It said July temperatures in the contiguous United States were record warm, and NOAA reported the global average temperature was tied for the second warmest July on record. El Niño isn’t forecast to reach peak intensity until sometime between October and January. The worst of it may still be ahead.
Kirtman said scientists don’t have a clear understanding of how the warming climate will influence El Niño’s relationships with the atmosphere and weather. He said, “This is an El Nino superimposed on top of a pretty big climate change signal.” Emily Becker, a research associate professor at the Rosenstiel School, said, “This is a question we’ve been looking at for years, but it’s far from resolved.” That’s the official state of knowledge: lots of data, not much certainty, and a public left to wait.
Scientists said warmer air can hold more moisture, which can make El Niño-driven rainfall more extreme. McPhaden said that in a region where El Niño would normally produce heavy rainfall, it can now produce extreme rainfall because there’s more moisture to wring out of the atmosphere. He also said warmer temperatures can dry out soils and plants more quickly and more thoroughly, turning an El Niño drought into an extreme or extraordinary drought. The same system can flood one place and parch another. The burden lands where it always does.
Swain said the southern tier states have a pretty good shot at a wetter than average or even “much wetter than average” winter, and that’s also true in Southern California. Kirtman disagreed that bigger El Niño signals necessarily mean bigger impacts. He said, “Do I expect the traditional El Nino signals to happen? I think the answer is yes, without question. Do I expect those signals to necessarily be bigger or the impacts to be larger? I don’t know the answer.” He added, “Your assumption would be if the El Nino is bigger, then therefore those signals would necessarily get bigger. And that’s not true.”
Surprises for the Bottom, Uncertainty for the Top
Kirtman said scientists fully expect surprises during the event. He said, “I would bet dollars to doughnuts that there’s going to be some big surprises.” McPhaden said no two El Niños are exactly alike and each has its own unique character. Becker said the surprises won’t necessarily be bad, and that things are not going to happen the way they have before. Kirtman and Becker said the event presents a huge learning opportunity and might tell scientists something about what the climate system might look like 15 years from today or 10 years from today.
That’s the language of the people who study the system from above. For everyone else, the question is simpler. How hard will it hit, where, and when? The models can’t answer that cleanly. The institutions can’t promise protection. And the weather, like the power structures that shape who gets prepared and who gets left exposed, keeps moving anyway.