United Kingdom: Scientists have warned that the return of the El Nino climate phenomenon later in 2023 will result in global temperatures rising “off the chart” and delivering unprecedented heatwaves.

The reports stated that El Nino will return later in 2023, exacerbating extremely hot weather across the world and making it “very likely” to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius warming.

Both El Nino and its counterpart, La Nina, are part of a larger-scale climate pattern known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. ENSO is based on the variation of both sea surface temperatures, or SSTs, and air pressure tendencies in and around the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The warm phase of ENSO is known as El Nino, and the cool phase is La Nina.

Furthermore, weather forecast reports indicated that 2023 is going to be hotter than 2022, which was already ranked as the fifth or sixth hottest year on record.

Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have increased the average global temperature by about 1.2 degrees Celsius.This has already led to catastrophic impacts around the world, from searing heatwaves in the US and Europe to devastating floods in Pakistan and Nigeria, harming millions of people.

Prof. Adam Scaife, the head of long-range prediction at the UK Met Office, remarked that “it’s very likely that the next big El Nino could take us over 1.5C. The probability of having the first year at 1.5C in the next five-year period is now about 50:50.”

“We know that under climate change, the impacts of El Nino events are going to get stronger, and you have to add that to the effects of climate change itself, which is growing all the time. You put those two things together, and we are likely to see unprecedented heatwaves during the next El Nino,” Prof. Scaife further added.

Recently, Prof. James Hansen, at Columbia University in New York, and colleagues commented that “We suggest that 2024 is likely to be off the charts as the warmest year on record. It is unlikely that the current La Nina will continue for a fourth year. Even a minor El Nio should be enough to cause record global temperatures.”

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