UN Chief: El Niño May Fuel Extreme Weather in a Warming World
Impacts will hit even harder, travel even farther, and cross borders with devastating speed.
Hyderabad: Be prepared. This is the terse summary of the latest warning on Tuesday from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) about El Nino this year. For those wilting in the summer heat and hoping for whatever relief the rain could offer, the WOM forecast above average temperatures from June to August.
Lending weight to the WMO’s announcement about El Nino was the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who in a video statement, said, “The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is. El Nino conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world. Impacts will hit even harder, travel even farther, and cross borders with devastating speed.”
Guterres said: “The science is clear: El Nino is arriving on our doorstep in the coming months with 90 per cent certainty.”
The WMO, in a news release, said warm ocean waters were fuelling EL Nino development this year, and as a result, above average temperatures are forecast for “nearly everywhere” from June to August.
The “time for informed decision-making, planning and preparedness is now,” the WMO added.
“We need to prepare for a potentially strong El Nino event – which will exacerbate drought and heavy rainfall and increase the risk of heatwaves both on land and in the ocean. The most recent El Nino, in 2023-24, was one of the five strongest on record and it played a role in the record global temperatures we saw in 2024,” WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo said.
It may be recalled that the India Meteorological Department has downgraded its initial forecast of rain this monsoon from 92 per cent of the long period average (LPA, data from 1971 to 2020) for the country to 90 per cent of the LPA taking the predicted rains this year to a deficit category, though the IMD officially has stuck to ‘below-normal’ status to describe what might be in the offing.
The WMO, in its release said, El Nino was typically associated with increased rainfall in parts of southern South America, the southern United States, parts of the Horn of Africa and Central Asia, and drier conditions over Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia, and parts of Southern Asia.
Infograph
El Nino – You’ve been warned, says WMO
Warm ocean waters fuelling El Nino development.
India looking at drier than normal rains.
Will see rise in global temperatures, extreme weather and rainfall patterns.