El Niño has intensified this year, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that the pattern continues to strengthen, CBS News reported. The agency said its effects through next spring may even be considered historic. Talk of a "super El Niño" has spread around the event, but that phrase is not official. Neither NOAA nor the World Meteorological Organization uses it. Both agencies categorize this year's event as "very strong."
El Niño is a climate pattern defined by warmer waters in a specific stretch of the equatorial Pacific. It occurs every two to seven years and usually lasts nine to 12 months. When it is active, much of the world gets warmer too. NOAA declares an El Niño when those conditions are detected in the tropical Pacific for at least a three-month period, five times in a row, and when sea-surface temperatures in the region rise 0.5 degrees Celsius or more above average. As of Nov. 12, sea-surface temperature anomalies topped 4 degrees Celsius as the event strengthened, the Climate Prediction Center said. If temperatures stay 2 degrees or more above average for five three-month periods in a row, the event is classified as "very strong."
In September, University of Chicago researchers estimated that about 451,000 more people would die worldwide during this year's El Niño, compared with a typical year, because of excessive heat exposure. That is a research estimate, not an official NOAA forecast. The pattern's effects still vary by region. Southern North America tends to see a wetter, stormier winter; the northern part of the continent often has milder, drier weather. Northern South America, central Africa, Australia, and southern Asia typically turn drier, raising drought risk, while eastern Asia and southern South America often get more rain and a higher flood risk. Contrasting drought and record rain have already prompted national emergencies in parts of Central and South America, CBS News said.
This year's hurricane seasons were a clearer illustration. El Niño tends to suppress tropical storms in the Atlantic and encourage them in the Pacific. It played a key role in the Atlantic basin's record-low activity this year and in the Pacific season's record intensity, the report said. Fishing, farming, and utilities that depend on rainfall and wind also feel the swing. The careful wording matters here: the official category is "very strong," the Nov. 12 ocean-temperature anomaly is above 4 degrees Celsius, and the heat-death figure is a University of Chicago estimate, not a government death count.