Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash
Last week, we saw global average temperature records set for three days in a row. Climate scientists think it was the hottest week planet Earth has experienced for over 125,000 years, meaning no human has ever lived on such a sweltering world. The cause of this sudden intense heat is a double gut punch of human-driven climate change and El Niño. While the days since have cooled off, we are far from reaching the peak. Climate scientists are predicting yet more record-setting global temperatures over the coming months and years, and their impact will be devastating. But, there may be a positive side to this global catastrophe.
Let’s start with what El Niño actually is. El Niño and La Niña are two sides of a natural oscillating climate system which affects the temperature of the Pacific Ocean. During La Niña, cold water builds up along the equator in the Pacific, and during El Niño, the opposite occurs, as the Pacific dramatically heats up. As the Pacific is so damn massive, these temperature swings profoundly affect the entire globe’s climate and its weather patterns, heating it up during El Niño and cooling it down during La Niña.
The last La Niña cycle ended last year, and this year we have seen one of the most potent El Niño on record start to kick in. In fact, thanks to both climate change and El Niño, ocean surface temperatures worldwide are now far higher than anything our climate models predicted. Normally, El Niños only heat around 10% of the Pacific, but this one is so off-the-charts powerful that 50% of the Pacific is dramatically heating up.
But we can’t blame this heat on the El Niño. A report by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service stated that the record-breaking global heat started before El Niño actually got going, and last year, during a colder La Niña, was still one of the hottest years on record. This means we are the ones to blame, as human-driven climate change is the leading cause of this insane heat; El Niño is just helping to tip it over the edge.
