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Earth

Warning of Unprecedented Heatwaves as El Nino Set To Return in 2023 49

The return of the El Nino climate phenomenon later this year will cause global temperatures to rise "off the chart" and deliver unprecedented heatwaves, scientists have warned. From a report: Early forecasts suggest El Nino will return later in 2023, exacerbating extreme weather around the globe and making it "very likely" the world will exceed 1.5C of warming. The hottest year in recorded history, 2016, was driven by a major El Nino.

It is part of a natural oscillation driven by ocean temperatures and winds in the Pacific, which switches between El Nino, its cooler counterpart La Nina, and neutral conditions. The last three years have seen an unusual run of consecutive La Nina events. This year is already forecast to be hotter than 2022, which global datasets rank as the fifth or sixth hottest year on record. But El Nino occurs during the northern hemisphere winter and its heating effect takes months to be felt, meaning 2024 is much more likely to set a new global temperature record.
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Warning of Unprecedented Heatwaves as El Nino Set To Return in 2023

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  • What are they benchmarking against? There's no way it means 1.5c in one year, and I have strong suspicions about the measurement methods as well.
    • Presumably 1.5ÂC above the average pre-industrial year.

      • by Strauss ( 123071 ) on Monday January 16, 2023 @04:34PM (#63214042)

        Almost precisely.
        From the article;

        The greenhouse gases emitted by human activities have driven up average global temperature by about 1.2C to date...

        There's a lovely webcomic by XKCD [xkcd.com] that shows the general timeline. Look for the swoop at the bottom... that's what the climate folks want to bend back closer to a straight line.

        • The greenhouse gases emitted by human activities have driven up average global temperature by about 1.2C to date...

          Just a few days ago there was another article here on /. that said 1.1 degrees to date. So at that rate we will probably hit 1.5 by next Wednesday.

          • by necro81 ( 917438 )

            There's a lovely webcomic by XKCD [xkcd.com] that shows the general timeline. Look for the swoop at the bottom... that's what the climate folks want to bend back closer to a straight line.

            Just a few days ago there was another article here on /. that said 1.1 degrees to date. So at that rate we will probably hit 1.5 by next Wednesday.

            Ooooh, wait, there's an XKCD for that [xkcd.com], too!

        • Average by 1.2C. With 2023 being an El Nino year, then this particular year could be 1.5C above the baseline. It's pretty clear.
    • What are they benchmarking against? There's no way it means 1.5c in one year, and I have strong suspicions about the measurement methods as well.

      Yeah! 4.5 Billion years ago, the entire surface of the earth was covered in molten lava! That's the original baseline!!

      It's still nowhere near as hot as that!!! So we're all fine!!!!

      Derp!! Derp!!

  • I mean... (Score:1, Troll)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 )

    ...even Chicken Little *eventually* shut up.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday January 16, 2023 @04:53PM (#63214112)

    The difference between El Nino and La Nina - the two sides of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) - is not really that one event is warm and one is cold. It's a difference in which parts of the equatorial Pacific are warm and which are cold (hence the term "oscillation" in the name).

    In El Nino, the waters at the western end (near Australia) are cooler, and the waters near South America are warmer. In La Nina, it's the opposite.

    https://www.climate.gov/enso [climate.gov]

    This year's La Nina has been somewhat atypical in regards to US West Coast weather (which is where the ENSO's effects are the most pronounced)... but that's just how probability works. I imagine the California water managers are happy about it.

    (I didn't bother trying the Spanish "en-yay" here on Slashdot, given the site has trouble enough with plain ASCII - unless it's being used for ASCII-art swastikas)

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by fbobraga ( 1612783 )

      (I didn't bother trying the Spanish "en-yay" here on Slashdot, given the site has trouble enough with plain ASCII - unless it's being used for ASCII-art swastikas)

      it's fÃckÃng ridicuous

    • We've putting up with atmospheric rivers for a couple of weeks here on the West coast. It has been kinda hard, but we need the water so badly. I live not so far from a river, it was close to spilling over last week, have not seen the river like that since an El Nino in 1997/8. We really are terrible about capturing much of the water. That river was pushing around 900,000,000 gallons per second, headed right for the ocean. I think they said that storm brought 18 trillion gallons, would be great if we could

      • * 900,000 gallons/sec my bad.

      • I live north of you - Washington state. Typically in a La Nina winter we'd have even more rain than usual, since the Jet Stream would be aimed right at us much of the time. This winter hasn't been all that bad - we've still had bouts of rain, but also some nice dry and relatively warm days (lower 50s F) like today. Overall, our weather has been just a sideshow (pretty literally) to the main event that's been pummelling northern California.

    • The volcanic cooling from Tonga is dissipating so they're trying to capitalize on it for fear - hoping people will forget.

      Which they will.

    • I recently started watching wrestling from tonight using the USA channel, and I must say I'm really impressed. The channel provides great coverage of all the major events and allows you to watch every match from the beginning. The picture quality is excellent and I haven't encountered any hiccups or lags, even during the most intense matches. Furthermore, the channel has plenty of additional content such as behind the scenes and interviews, making it a great source of entertainment. I would definitely recom
  • I'm happy that I don't have kids ... Poor future generations :(
  • I'm not a climatologist, but my understanding is 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming is for some sort of regression, or average of multiple years. A single year above 1.5C isn't what climatologists are worried about. That would just be noise in the data, and we should be more concerned about the trend.

    If climatologists are indeed worried about a single year above 1.5 degrees, we should definitely be questioning their methods.
  • by JabrTheHut ( 640719 ) on Monday January 16, 2023 @05:27PM (#63214258)

    I wish I could go there once before it dies, but that’s not likely to happen.

  • Temperature may only be "off the chart" if you intentionally limit that chart to a certain, very narrow range of temperatures. If you do as little as having the Y-axis cover the average temperatures of the last 100k years, then certainly nothing will get "off the chart" (unless a meteorite hits or a super-volcano erupts).
  • I'm just about to plan my holidays for this year.

  • This is nothing more than FUD. There are news stories that state that temperature records were set this past year and also there was no warming this past year.

  • It's about time some Darwinian evolution kicked back in.
  • The return of the El Nino climate phenomenon later this year will cause the pace of climate change posts on slashdot, already considered by many to be nothing short of an infestation -- to increase levels unseen since the last cycle of this oceanic weather pattern. Buckle down, mate.

This is now. Later is later.

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