Another El Niño?

An image showing the 2015 El Niño with rising temperatures in the Pacific (Source: The BBC)

This northern hemisphere summer should have convinced most people that global warming is a very real threat, and it's a threat now, not in 30 years' time.  Yet I have already seen denialists saying temperatures are declining, so there is no such thing as global warming.  Temperatures are declining because the 2015 El Niño has abated.  The trend is still up.  When there is another El Niño, temperatures will move back to and perhaps beyond previous highs.

Now, world meteorological bodies have upped their risk assessment that a new El Niño has started. 

There's a 70% chance of a recurrence of the El Niño weather event before the end of this year, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

The last El Niño occurred in 2015-16 and impacted weather patterns around the world.

Researchers say they are not expecting this new one to be as intense as 2015-16.

According to the WMO, climate change is influencing the traditional dynamics of these weather events.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation, to give its proper title, is a natural event that involves fluctuating ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific, which influence the weather all over the world.

The 2015-16 El Niño was one of the strongest ever recorded, and had an impact on global temperatures, which saw 2016 enter the record books as the warmest year.

As well as heat, the event also led to drought in Africa that saw food production plummet in many countries across the continent. South America saw floods across Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

This year started with the opposite to El Niño, the so-called La Niña phase. This saw cooler than average sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific.

That has now faded and, according to the WMO models, there's a 70% chance of another El Niño developing by the end of this year.

[Read more here]

In Australia, the ruling conservative coalition denies that global warming is happening and in fact wants to build more coal power stations.  Since these are not economic and no private sector company will build them, they want to build them with government money.  The sheer madness of this is disheartening.  But one of the parties in the coalition is the National Party (which used to be called the Country Party) and farmers are getting restive.  There's been a long drought in SE Australia, which no one doubts has been made deeper and longer by global warming.  And instead of getting relief from the drought by a La Niña episode, we are moving into a new El Niño, and the drought isn't going to end this year.  Will this force the Nationals to do something about climate change?  People have a capacity for infinite stupidity and duplicity (those in receipt of "funding" from fossil fuel companies and their fronts.)   We shall see.

New global temperature highs will just emphasise what people are experiencing.  Surveys show that the public continues to get more worried about global warming and continues to want more done.   How much longer will the Right refuse to act on this pressure?