World is unprepared for major El Nino later this year
World is unprepared for major El Niņo later this year
THE weather is preparing to go wild, and will wreak havoc and death around the globe later this year. An El Niņo, a splurge of warm water in the Pacific Ocean, is coming. It will unleash floods in the Americas, while South-East Asia and Australia face drought. Yet little is being done to address these consequences.
"The tropical climate system is primed for a big El Niņo," says Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu (see diagram).
An El Niņo begins when warm water near Indonesia spreads eastwards and rises to the surface of the Pacific. The warm water carries rain with it, so El Niņo takes rain from Asia and Australia and dumps it on the Americas (see "Rising waters").
The effects can be deadly. A big El Niņo in 1997-98 killed 20,000 people and caused almost $97 billion of damage.
Meteorologists contacted by New Scientist all expect an El Niņo at the end of this year. And it looks like a big one, says Wenju Cai of CSIRO, Australia's national research agency, in Melbourne. The more heat in the Pacific, the bigger the El Niņo, and right now, 150 metres below the surface, a ball of warm water is crossing that ocean. "It's huge," says Cai.
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