{"id":928585,"date":"2026-10-15T03:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T03:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/928585\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T03:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T03:18:15","slug":"six-things-scientists-say-you-need-to-know-about-el-nino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/928585\/","title":{"rendered":"Six things scientists say you need to know about El Ni\u00f1o"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n As the near-certainty of a record-breaking super El Ni\u00f1o<\/a> has become clear, the scientists who predict and study it have been inundated by inquiries from the press and public. While there seems to be widespread recognition of what the term \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o\u201d means, many people are confused about how El Ni\u00f1o may affect them and its ties to extreme weather events, among other things.\n <\/p>\n

\n Here are the top 6 confusing things about El Ni\u00f1o, as relayed to CNN via meteorologists and climate scientists.\n <\/p>\n

\n Scientists talk about likely outcomes enough that it\u2019s easy to assume all El Ni\u00f1o events have the same impacts \u2014 that an El Ni\u00f1o year will mean more rain in California, for example. But each El Ni\u00f1o event is actually distinct. You can see that in the way the 2015-to-2016 super El Ni\u00f1o failed to deliver excessive rainfall to California, despite predictions \u2014 based on previous super El Ni\u00f1o events \u2014 that it would.\n <\/p>\n

\n Part of the reason for the idiosyncratic nature of El Ni\u00f1o events is that they don\u2019t act alone, but instead interact with other influences on weather patterns, such as the polar vortex and different ocean and atmospheric weather and climate cycles.\n <\/p>\n

\n According to veteran El Ni\u00f1o researcher Michael McPhaden, El Ni\u00f1o comes in all shapes and sizes, and \u201cno two are exactly the same.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere\u2019s a tremendous amount of chaos in the climate system,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n It can be tempting to view El Ni\u00f1o \u2014 and the extreme weather events it contributes to \u2014 as all bad news. But some areas can benefit from this climate cycle. For example, the Atlantic hurricane season has been unusually quiet this year, with just one hurricane forming so far (though it unfortunately struck the US<\/a>).\n <\/p>\n

\n That dearth of storms is directly tied to El Ni\u00f1o and the way it creates strong winds in the upper atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic, which have a tendency to tear fledgling tropical storms and hurricanes apart before they can do damage. In addition, parts of the US can have warmer-than-average winters during El Ni\u00f1o years, lowering heating costs.\n <\/p>\n

\n Of course, El Ni\u00f1o will still be bad news for other regions. At the same time as it\u2019s prevented hurricanes from forming in the Atlantic, El Ni\u00f1o has led to a frenzy of hurricane activity in the eastern and central Pacific, with three storms impacting Hawaii in just one season.\n <\/p>\n

\"Surfers<\/p>\n

\n Kelvin waves are a key player<\/a> in contributing to the formation and maintenance<\/a> of an El Ni\u00f1o event, but their effects are largely felt under the ocean\u2019s surface, where they transport huge amounts of ocean heat from the western Pacific to the central and eastern Pacific.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cA Kelvin wave is not a tsunami or a wall of water,\u201d said Dillon Amaya of North Carolina State University, who has been closely following Kelvin waves\u2019 progress into California during this El Ni\u00f1o.\n <\/p>\n

\u26c5 Get CNN Weather in your inbox<\/p>\n

The forecast is just the beginning. We\u2019ll\u202fsend you expert coverage and the stories behind the weather \u2014 so you always know more than just the number. Sign up for the newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

\n After coming ashore in South America, such waves can then move north along the West Coast, where they can temporarily raise sea levels by 6 inches to a foot. But they do so slowly. If you were sitting on a beach looking at the water and a Kelvin wave were to lumber through, it\u2019s unlikely that you\u2019d even be able to see it.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s an increase in the height of the nearest ~15 miles of water to the coast of 6-12 inches,\u201d Amaya said. \u201cBecause that signal is so wide relative to the vertical change, it\u2019s going to be hard for people to see in the same way they see a crashing wave.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Kelvin waves are important not only for their role in heat transport, but because they make the coastline more vulnerable to flooding during astronomical high tides and winter storms.\n <\/p>\n

\n The relationship between climate change and El Ni\u00f1o is a subject of active scientific research, with some studies showing that human-caused climate change could exacerbate the effects of El Ni\u00f1o events, and others coming to different conclusions.\n <\/p>\n

\n One recent study did show that climate change is leading to stronger El Ni\u00f1o episodes<\/a>, but that is viewed in the scientific community as a new finding that needs to be replicated via other studies before it is widely accepted.\n <\/p>\n

\n At the same time, this super El Ni\u00f1o is occurring in a world in which the oceans are already record warm, adding heat on top of heat. El Ni\u00f1o events release stored heat from the ocean and transfer some of it into the atmosphere, boosting global average air temperatures for one to two years on top of climate change trends.\n <\/p>\n

\n For this reason, it is very likely that 2026 and especially 2027 will set records for the planet\u2019s warmest years to date.\n <\/p>\n

\n The bottom line is that El Ni\u00f1o is a naturally occurring phenomenon that takes place about every three to seven years, with a minority of these events becoming strong enough to earn the informal designation of a super El Ni\u00f1o.\n <\/p>\n

\"Seawater<\/p>\n

\n The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration puts far more emphasis on weekly to monthly El Ni\u00f1o data than daily information, because there is so much variability in the day-to-day sea surface temperatures in the Pacific.\n <\/p>\n

\n But because of the increased availability of daily ocean temperature data, many scientists are communicating on social media via vibe-coded dashboards, with daily data, leading to some confusion about whether and when El Ni\u00f1o has exceeded a historical benchmark.\n <\/p>\n

\n By our count, using the weekly numbers from NOAA\u2019s new \u201cRelative Oceanic Ni\u00f1o Index,\u201d El Ni\u00f1o is on track to set an all-time intensity record in November or December, and is running at or just above record levels for this time of year.\n <\/p>\n

\n Many people want to know how this El Ni\u00f1o will affect them, but we can\u2019t tell you the time and place. El Ni\u00f1o is not a storm that hits at a particular location, but rather a long duration phenomenon that tilts the odds in favor of extreme weather and climate events for certain areas.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the near-certainty of a record-breaking super El Ni\u00f1o has become clear, the scientists who predict and study…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":928586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-928585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}