How does El Nino affect different regions?
"Depending on its strength, El Niño can have a variety of impacts, such as increasing the risk of heavy rains and droughts in some locations around the world," NOAA quoted climate scientist Michelle L'Heureux at the Climate Prediction Center as saying.
El Nino combined with climate change will cause many extreme weather conditions. Photo: DPA
“Climate change can exacerbate or mitigate certain impacts associated with El Nino. For example, El Nino can lead to new temperature records, particularly in areas that have already experienced above-average temperatures,” the statement added.
However, El Nino typically brings increased rainfall in South America, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa, raising hopes that it could end droughts there. Conversely, the climate pattern increases the risk of increased drought in other regions such as Australia, Indonesia and parts of South Asia.
Earlier this week, Australia warned that El Nino would bring hotter, drier days to the already fire-prone country, while Japan and Spain both said the climate pattern had just caused their countries' warmest spring on record.
In the United States, El Nino has a relatively weak impact in the summer, but strengthens from late fall through spring, according to NOAA. While El Nino tends to limit hurricane activity in the Atlantic, it often boosts hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific .
What is El Nino and El Nina?
This climate pattern occurs every 2 to 7 years on average. The word El Nino means “the little boy” in Spanish and it refers to a warming phase of the climate.
This pattern occurs largely due to an unusually warm zone of water in the Eastern Pacific , which forms when trade winds blowing from east to west along the equatorial Pacific slow down or even reverse as air pressure changes.
Before this El Nino phase began, global average sea surface temperatures in May were about 0.1 degrees Celsius higher than any other temperature on record.
The last time the warming effect of El Nino occurred was from 2018 to 2019, and then a period of cooler weather, known as La Nina, from 2020 until El Nino returned this year. However, due to climate change, the weather in recent years has been warmer than average.
La Nina, Spanish for "little girl," is a cold weather phenomenon in which sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean near the equator are lower than normal.
The strongest El Nino effect on record was in 2015 and 2016, when nearly a third of the corals on Australia's Great Barrier Reef died due to unusually warm ocean waters.
Impact on agriculture
Hot, dry weather caused by El Nino is threatening food producers across Asia, with sugar and coffee futures surging on Thursday following the report.
El Nino is forecast to affect the productivity of some crops in Asian countries, including Vietnam. Illustration photo: Reuters
Experts say a strong El Nino could hit sugar production in India and Thailand and disrupt the sugarcane harvest in Brazil. They also see risks for coffee production in Vietnam.
“The report is definitely a factor in the spike in coffee prices today,” said a coffee broker in New York. “This news will probably make buyers who have been waiting for lower prices very nervous,” said a U.S. sugar trader.
El Nino could cut winter crop yields by 34% from record highs in Australia, while also hitting palm oil and rice output in Indonesia, Malaysia - which supplies 80% of the world's palm oil - and Thailand.
Hoang Anh (according to AFP, AP, Reuters)
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