The Climate and The Weather - El Niño y La Niña

The Climate and the Weather + El Niño y La Niña = Wild Ride
“Recent spikes in ocean heat content and average global air temperature have left climate
scientists across the world scrambling to find the cause”. Steve Turton Adjunct Professor of
Environmental Geography, CQ University Australia
Ocean heat content and mean temperatures have increased to unprecedented record levels
since man has been able to measure and record sea water temperatures. Scientists are astonished
and puzzled. Also, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has tweeted a graph
reporting a spike in Global Mean Temperature (GMT) in June 15, 2023.
Prof. Turton warns: Global average sea and air temperatures are spiking in 2023,
before El Niño has fully arrived. We should be very concernedi Fact is that extreme weather
events are challenging the ability of scientists of predicting (the when) and explain the causes
(the why and the how) of such unprecedented phenomena.
Damien Isben and James Risbey, two scientists at CSIRO – Australia’s National Science
Agency, explain why is this related to predicting the weather (the local, short-term variations in
temperature, humidity and rainfall, say within a week) and understanding the climate (long-term
atmospheric and oceanic phenomena, during years)ii:
When an extreme weather event happens somewhere in the world these days, it’s
common to read quotes from climate scientists explaining this is exactly the kind of event
we expect to see more often as climate change progresses. Such events are often
devastating, but not surprising if you’ve been paying attention to the climate projections
issued by scientists for many decades now.
But every so often, an event is so extreme it causes scientists to question our

understanding of just how fast climate change is progressing. One such event was the
heatwave across the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada in the
northern summer of 2021, when temperatures at some locations hit 49℃ (121℉) –
hotter than the all-time record for Texas.
It broke heat records by such a wide margin that scientists were quoted in
the media saying they hadn’t expected to see temperatures so high in the Pacific
Northwest until much later this century.
The basic concern for these scientists was that our computer climate models are best at
simulating things that span large areas and long time periods, such as the annual
average global temperature (what we broadly mean when we say “the climate”). They
aren’t as good at simulating smaller-scale things such as an individual storm or hot wind
(that is, “the weather”).
So, atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are breaking records this year. Last month was
the warmest May for the world’s oceans since record-keeping began in 1850, according to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)iii. Thus, as I write this letter,
NOAA scientists are seeing an unprecedented interaction between global climate change and
ENSO. ENSO stands for El Niño Southern Oscillation, a climatic oscillation every number of
years, of meteorological parameters and the cyclic occurrence of extreme weather phenomena in
the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, and affected continents, primarily Australia and South America.
ENSO is made of a couple of opposite cyclic phenomena: El Niño (very warm and wet year)
followed by La Niña (very cold and dry year), with neutral or “normal” periods in between. SEE
diagram below.
Štěpán Šubík explains: El Niño is a state of the Southern oscillation between Asia (and north of
Australia) and South America. ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) in normal state means Trade winds
from East (warm) to West (cold). When El Niño occurs, Trade winds are weaker and can even travel
backwards. The simple oscillation is broken and warming in South America and cooling in Philippines
begins. On the other hand, with La Nina the Trade winds are stronger and there is cooling in the East
and warming in the West. El Niño or La Nina is a quasiperiodic phenomenon, which means that it shows
up once per 2 to 7 years and lasts 12 to 18 months.iv
What we expect in 2023 and 2024, at least in the Southern Hemisphere: WILD
WEATHER, VERY HOT AND HUMID, TORRENTIAL RAINS, FLOODS, EPIDEMICS,
INFRASTRUCTURE DESTRUCTION, DEATH AND MISERY in South America. We are not
prepared even for normal or neutral year weather variations. For such climatic events of
apocalyptic dimensions, people in small towns of Peru often pray on their knees and take from
churches the wood and plaster images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and various Saints to walk in
procession begging for God’s mercy and weather appeasement. It never works.
i
https://theconversation.com/global-average-sea-and-air-temperatures-are-spiking-in-2023-before-el-Niño-has-fully-
arrived-we-should-be-very-concerned-207731
ii
https://theconversation.com/is-climate-change-outpacing-our-ability-to-predict-extreme-heatwaves-207925
iii
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/climate/oceans-global-warming.html
iv
https://www.facebook.com/windyforecast/photos/enso-and-el-nino-phenomenonel-nino-is-a-state-of-the-southern-
oscillation-betwee/2359993504228769/?paipv=0&eav=AfaGHbQUNR_5pdm2D_N99xK2V0P-
UqZKORvAIF7XqURm4TG5cMqkdFoNfsXJFMn8ezY&_rdr

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The Climate and the Weather + El Niño y La Niña = Wild Ride

But every so often, an event is so extreme it causes scientists to question our

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