Climate Change Is Making Stronger El Niños

Society » ENVIRONMENT | October 22, 2019, Tuesday // 17:50
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Climate change is making stronger El Niños, which change weather worldwide and heat up an already warming planet, AP reported, citing a study published in the American Academy of Sciences.

For its purposes, scientists have investigated 33 El Niños - the natural warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which since 1901 has caused climatic extremes around the world. Experts have found that after the 1970s, have been forming farther to the west in warmer waters, leading to stronger El Niños in some cases.
 
A powerful El Niño can cause drought in some places, such as Australia and India, or floods in other regions, such as California. During an El Niño, hurricanes in the Pacific became larger and in the Atlantic - fewer.

The phenomenon makes winters softer and humid in the United States, which generally benefit from the strong El Niño. In other places, however, their manifestations are devastating. The 1997-1998 phenomenon caused thousands of deaths from severe storms, heat waves, floods and drought, and damages estimated at between $ 32 and $ 96 billion.
 
The shift for the origin of El Nino by hundreds of miles from the east of the International Dateline to the west of that point is important because the water to the west is naturally warmer, said study lead author Bin Wang, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Hawaii, AP reported. Prior to 1978, 12 of the 14 El Niños formed in the East. Since 1978, all 11 have formed more centrally or to the west
 
The three "super" El Niños, started in 1982, 1997 and 2015, and all started in the west. During each of them, the world has "broken" average temperature records. Experts have not studied the opposite phenomenon with the cooling effect - La Nina.

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Tags: El Niño, climate change, study, American Academy of Sciences

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