El Niño has arrived – 06/18/2023 – Marcia Castro

La Niña and El Niño are weather events that occur in the Pacific Ocean and whose effects are worldwide. During La Niña, waters in the eastern ocean (near the equator) are cooler than normal, which helps slow the rise in the Earth’s average temperature. The opposite happens during El Niño. The hottest year ever recorded on Earth was 2016, when one of the most severe El Niño events was observed.

On the last 8th, scientists declared that the conditions that determine an El Niño are already observed and should intensify over the coming months. El Niño arrives at a time when the world’s ocean surface temperature has reached an all-time high since 1982 (date of the first satellite records).

The ocean temperature reached 21.1°C on April 5. Since then, the daily curve has exhibited an exceptionally higher-than-expected pattern, leading to marine heat waves around the world that can have devastating effects on marine life and cause coral bleaching on tropical reefs.

It should be noted that more than 90% of the heat generated by the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation is absorbed by the ocean. While El Niño is an event that naturally happens every 2-7 years (the last one was recorded in 2016), marine heat waves are caused by human action.

The simultaneous occurrence of the two events could generate unprecedented warming, with record temperatures in 2023 and 2024 and serious social and economic consequences. A study published in the journal Science showed that the effects of El Niño are prolonged.

In Brazil, the estimate is that the loss in GDP per capita five years after the El Niño of 1982-1983 and 1997-1898 was 6.2% and 5.6%, respectively.

El Niño raises the temperature in Brazil and affects the rainfall pattern, with below average precipitation in the North and Northeast regions and above average in the South region. Between the late 19th and 20th centuries, 11 drought periods in the Northeast coincided with El Niño events, including the great drought of 1877. In this century, the 2012-2015 drought was exacerbated by the 2015-16 El Niño.

In the Amazon, the reduction in rainfall and the increase in temperature during El Niño, the high rates of deforestation in recent months (despite the recent drop in May), and the arrival of the burning season could result in a large number of fires and area burned. The largest burned area ever observed in the region since 1988 was in 2016 (32,138 km²), during the last El Niño.

An intense period of fires means more emission of greenhouse gases and particulate matter harmful to health. The extent of these emissions is not limited to the area where the fires take place, which recently gained attention with the worsening of air quality in the northeastern United States in early June, especially in New York City, as a result of wildfires in Canada.

From an energy point of view, the effects may not be as intense in Brazil. The last three years of La Niña have helped to improve reservoir levels. According to this Saturday’s update (16), all regions are at capacity above 82%, except for the North, with a capacity of 99.04%.

The events of recent decades make it possible to understand the extent of the social and economic damage caused by El Niño. The speed of concrete adaptation, mitigation and harm reduction actions is much slower than the generation of knowledge. Future negative effects of El Niño and other extreme events (in Brazil and in the world) will be a demonstration of the worldwide failure to curb global warming.

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