{"id":610925,"date":"2026-09-01T06:30:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T06:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610925\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T06:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T06:30:40","slug":"how-worried-should-we-be-about-this-years-super-duper-el-nino-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610925\/","title":{"rendered":"How worried should we be about this year\u2019s \u2018Super-Duper El Ni\u00f1o\u2019? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Should we be worried about El Ni\u00f1o? The phenomenon is a naturally occurring part of what is known as the ENSO cycle (the El Ni\u00f1o Southern Oscillation) and happens every two to seven years. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a> (NOAA) and other scientific agencies declare an official El Ni\u00f1o event once Pacific Ocean temperatures are 0.5 degrees higher than normal, alongside weakening trade winds. While it usually brings changes to rainfall patterns across the tropics, leading to droughts and flooding \u2013 sometimes catastrophically so \u2013 the 2026-2027 El Ni\u00f1o is taking place on a planet that is already over 1 degree hotter due to human-caused global warming. <\/p>\n

With a temperature anomaly of 2 degrees already in parts of the eastern Pacific by July 2026, this year\u2019s El Ni\u00f1o looks on track to have no precedent in living memory. But while the ENSO cycle is natural, it is being turbocharged by global heating, in particular ocean warming. A team of scientists led by Columbia University\u2019s James Hansen published an analysis last week<\/a> that claimed the abnormal \u201cSuper-Duper El Ni\u00f1o\u201d strength is \u201clikely human-driven\u201d. <\/p>\n

As far back as 2014 a study published in Nature Climate Change <\/a>reported that the frequency of extreme El Ni\u00f1o events would double in response to global heating. A research article published in Science last week<\/a> found that El Ni\u00f1o events over the past 40 years have grown roughly 40 per cent stronger than those seen during the pre-industrial era, in parallel with global temperatures. This would suggest that as the planet heats up we can expect more extreme El Ni\u00f1os. <\/p>\n

The 2015 \u201cvery strong\u201d El Ni\u00f1o saw temperature anomalies well above 2 degrees at its peak. It brought catastrophic forest and peat fires in Indonesia, extensive coral bleaching and more tropical cyclones. There were crop failures in Southern Africa with up to 10 million people in Ethiopia requiring emergency food aid, and drought and fire risk in Australia. <\/p>\n

But this year\u2019s El Ni\u00f1o could exceed the 2015 event \u201cby a mind-blowing margin\u201d<\/a>, predicts one climate scientist, Zeke Hausfather. <\/p>\n

NOAA does not even have an additional category name for an El Nino of above 3 degrees.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1os mostly impact the tropics but this does not mean that Europe will not be affected. The phenomenon, while temporary, can affect rainfall patterns on the European Continent and drive global temperatures up even further, leading to more weather extremes and heat stress. And this summer\u2019s European heatwaves have shown just how dangerous heat can be. A study published by The Lancet in August 2026<\/a> estimates that each degree Celsius of global warming adds a month of intolerable heat for one billion people, many of whom cannot afford air conditioning or cooling. <\/p>\n

For Ireland and the UK<\/a> a \u201csuper\u201d El Ni\u00f1o (defined as an ocean temperature anomaly of 2 degrees) could be associated with increased rainfall and more storms, driven by a southerly shift in the jet stream. There is limited information on the Met \u00c9ireann website<\/a> about what this year\u2019s monster event (which has a 95 per cent likelihood of exceeding 2 degrees) might mean for Ireland. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0El Ni\u00f1o could cause Ireland to have unseasonably warm autumnOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It says only that \u201cthe currently developing strong El Ni\u00f1o has the potential, together with the underlying global warming trend, to lead to record high global mean temperatures in the second half of 2026 and in 2027, and to extreme weather events. [But] its influence on Ireland and Europe is comparatively weak, highly variable, and not robust in the present-day climate\u201d.<\/p>\n

Climate science is not the same as weather forecasting. Scientists are careful to \u201cstay in their lanes\u201d and only report conclusions they have confidence in. But the public, along with Government agencies and local authorities, needs more than a 10-day forecast when we know this winter is likely to see the strongest El Ni\u00f1o in recorded history. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Were this summer\u2019s heatwaves caused by El Ni\u00f1o, or something even more terrifying?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Ireland has a thriving scientific research community, yet there is too little public discussion of the fact that the rate of global heating is accelerating<\/a>, not stabilising or declining. The Earth\u2019s Energy Imbalance (EEI) has doubled in the last 15 years<\/a>. The last time the Earth had this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, temperatures were 2.5-4 degrees warmer than the pre-industrial average, and sea levels were 15m-25m higher than today\u2019s levels. Those conditions developed over thousands of years, however; not 200 years. There is simply no precedent for the pace of global heating that is taking place now, and it is greater than many model estimates in the most recent assessment report of the IPCC. If this information is not keeping our political leaders awake at night, it should be.<\/p>\n

Eight years ago, scientists from the Stockholm Resilience Centre warned<\/a> that a failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions along with the continued degradation of the biosphere could tip the Earth out of the stable climatic conditions to which human civilisation has adapted, and into a new unstable and \u201chothouse<\/a>\u201d state. Such a process could unfold slowly or, like bankruptcy, could then happen very quickly if key thresholds or tipping points are crossed. <\/p>\n

All of this means that on a planet already heating up due to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the 2026 El Ni\u00f1o will throw fuel on to a raging fire. <\/p>\n

Sadhbh O\u2019Neill is a climate and environmental researcher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Should we be worried about El Ni\u00f1o? The phenomenon is a naturally occurring part of what is known…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[2885,246,61,60,82,18335,15950],"class_list":["post-610925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-weather-events","tag-weather-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}