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Atmospheric Science

A boost in big El Niño

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 90–91 (2014)Cite this article

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Computer models and theory do not offer a consensus on how El Niño will change under global warming. Despite this disagreement, a study indicates a robust increase in the frequency of extreme El Niño episodes.

About once every four years, on average, one of the most powerful and far-reaching climate phenomena, known as El Niño, extends its influence to most continents and oceans of the world. This phenomenon, which originates in the tropics and is characterized by unusually warm and wet conditions in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean, triggers large-scale weather patterns that disrupt remote regions through floods, droughts, heat waves and cold spells. During extreme El Niño episodes, as occurred in 1982/83 and 1997/98, the worldwide societal, economic and environmental impacts have been particularly costly, with damages totalling in the tens of billions of US dollars and thousands of lives lost1. Although the physical mechanisms and effects of El Niño in today's climate are relatively well understood, there is considerable uncertainty regarding how the El Niño phenomenon will respond to global warming2. Even in the face of this uncertainty, in this issue of Nature Climate Change Cai and colleagues3 identify and report on a robust change in climate models — extreme El Niño episodes will increase in frequency under global warming.

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Figure 1: Illustration of extreme El Niño conditions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nathaniel Johnson is at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive MC 206, La Jolla, California 92093-0206, USA,

    Nathaniel C. Johnson

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  1. Nathaniel C. Johnson
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Correspondence to Nathaniel C. Johnson.

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Johnson, N. A boost in big El Niño. Nature Clim Change 4, 90–91 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2108

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