The prospect of an El Niño climate pattern has made headlines for months now, but while ocean temperatures are strongly favouring its development, the atmosphere still hasn't kicked into gear. So what's going on?
abc.net.au/news/unusual-el-nino-development-bureau-of-meteorology-iod/102861886Climate scientists say they have "never seen anything" like this year's emerging El Niño, as the major climatic event inches closer to development.
An El Niño is characterised by a complex interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean over the Pacific Ocean. This year, sea surface temperatures have well and truly exceeded El Niño values of 0.8 degrees Celsius above normal and have done for months — now 1.6C warmer than normal."It's definitely given us a lot of food for thought," Dr Grainger said.Warmer than normal sea surface temperature in the central and eastern Pacific is synonymous with El Niño.
In its latest climate driver update released this week, BOM kept the El Niño status at an "alert" level, or a 70 per cent chance of development, for the seventh time in a row.It still considers the development of an El Niño event the most likely occurence, however, and Dr Grainger said there were glimmers to show the atmospheric patterns were falling into line with that of the ocean.
But he wanted to see the atmospheric response last longer before BOM was confident an El Niño event was underway. "This can have real impacts on agriculture, on bushfire risk, on the potential for more intense heatwaves, and all these things have had significant impacts on human health and the economy."Another change that has occurred over the past fortnight, according to Dr Grainger, is the "very likely" development of another dry-weather climate driver, known as a positive Indian Ocean Dipole .
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