United States: The United Nations has issued a warning that there is a higher chance of the El Niño weather pattern occurring in the next few months, which could result in elevated global temperatures and the possibility of setting new heat records.

According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), there is a 60 percent chance that El Niño will develop by the end of July 2023 and an 80 percent chance it will occur by the end of September 2023. El Niño is a natural climate pattern associated with worldwide increased heat, drought in some regions, and heavy rainfall in others.

“This will change the weather and climate patterns worldwide,” Mr. Wilfran Moufouma Okia, the head of the WMO’s regional climate prediction services division, told reporters in Geneva.

The WMO chief, Mr. Petteri Taalas, said in a statement that “the world should prepare for the development of El Niño. The expected arrival of the warming climate pattern will most likely lead to a new spike in global heating and increase the chance of breaking temperature records.”

The WMO pointed out that 2016 was “the warmest year on record because of the “double whammy” of a very powerful El Niño event and human-induced warming from greenhouse gases”.

“We are expecting in the coming two years to have a serious increase in global temperatures,” Mr. Okia noted.

Mr. Taalas highlighted that the expected arrival of El Niño could have some positive effects, pointing out that it “might bring respite from the drought in the Horn of Africa and other La Niña-related impacts”.

But it “could also trigger more extreme weather and climate events,” he said, stressing the need for effective early warning systems “to keep people safe.”

“No two El Niño events were the same, and their effects depended, in part, on the time of year,” the WMO remarked, adding that it and national meteorological services would be closely monitoring developments.

The climate pattern occurs on average every two to seven years and usually lasts nine to 12 months. It is typically associated with warming ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Oceans.

The last occurrence of El Niño was in 2018–19, and since 2020, the world has been experiencing an unusually long period of La Niña, which is the cooling opposite of El Niño. This ended earlier this year, and neutral conditions are currently prevailing.

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