El Niño has been strengthening for several months now and is already having a significant impact on global weather patterns. Countries including Indonesia, India and the United States have been experiencing droughts, floods and heatwaves in line with projections about how extreme weather events will be supercharged by the phenomenon. The World Meteorological Agency says the record-breaking El Niño will strengthen further and persist until at least 2027. Here are five ways its impact is already being felt around the world.
Indonesia, which typically trends drier and hotter in El Niño years, is battling its worst wildfire season since 2015. This year, since January, at least 895,657 hectares of land – nearly six times the size of Greater London – have been burned. This is more than twice the area burned last year without the influence of El Niño. The wildfires have led to school closures and an increase in hospital admissions across Indonesia.
Millions of people in Sumatra and Kalimantan have been exposed to toxic haze from the fires and around 175,000 people have suffered from respiratory illness. More than 40,000 cases – which range from coughs to bronchitis and more serious conditions like pneumonia – involve toddlers. In the eastern Pacific, where El Niño tends to strengthen hurricane activity, it has been a very active season so far. There have been 22 named storms and 12 hurricanes, including 10 major hurricanes.
This is already above the number that would typically develop in the whole of an average season, with two months left to go until its end. Here, El Niño provides the ingredients of higher ocean temperatures and weaker winds high in the atmosphere, making it easier for storms to gain strength. Hurricane Polo is one such example of this. The hurricane experienced rapid intensification, producing wind gusts of 180 mph (285 kmh), fueled by the very warm waters produced by El Niño.
Polo was also one of three hurricanes churning away in the same basin at the same time, along with Odalys and Nolo. Moreover, it has happened twice now in the space of a month. Earlier in September, the energy produced by exceptional ocean heat resulted in three simultaneous hurricanes in the central and eastern Pacific: Lowell, Karina and Marie. Until this year, the last time there had been three Pacific hurricanes at the same time was 2015.
In contrast, the Atlantic Ocean has remained eerily quiet. El Nino has a tendency to increase wind shear in the north Atlantic, a factor which tears apart storms and limits formation. There has only been one hurricane – Isaias – which made landfall in the Florida Panhandle and Alabama. This was the latest forming hurricane on record in the satellite era (1960s onward).
Before this year, the record was 11 September, set in 2002 and 2013. In an average season, there would have been 10 named storms, five hurricanes and two major hurricanes by this point. This year, however, there have only been eight tropical storms: Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo and Hanna. The drier and warmer theme has also taken hold in India, where the essential monsoon rainfall has been 13% below average.
While the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) would consider this still to be in the ‘normal’ range, the overall average doesn’t reflect the variation in rainfall across India. While Central India had around its normal expected rainfall, the east and north-east were around 26% drier than average and put into ‘exceptional’ drought. Southern states of India were 24% drier than average. Even where rainfall was nearer to average, the rain did not fall continuously as is typical during the monsoon, instead flipping between long dry spells and extreme rainfall.
This adds more stress and vulnerability to agriculture yields. India is influenced by a number of different weather patterns that can affect the monsoon season and so scientists suggest that El Niño may not have been the only factor. Further west in the Pacific, it’s also been an active season in eastern China and Japan as storms including Maysak and Dujuan have brought recent widespread floods and landslides. According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, there have been 10 tropical cyclones forming in the western Pacific Ocean – the highest number in a season since 1966.
During El Niño the warmer Pacific brings changes to wind patterns, meaning cyclones tend to form further east, away from Japan and east China. However, this means there is a bigger distance and more time where storms can feed off the warmer waters, gaining energy to become more intense typhoons before they hit land. Scientists believe that additional typhoons are likely to develop this year with the potential for further impacts to Japan or east China. Developing El Niño becomes strongest on record weeks before expected peak El Niño likely to cause wetter and warmer-than-normal autumn
