El Nino is expected ‘to break records’: top expert

Paris: The current El Niño weather event is expected to break records in terms of overall strength, a top expert said on Tuesday, raising concerns about droughts, floods and other extreme events linked to the event.

Tim Stockdale, an El Nino expert at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), an intergovernmental organisation, said forecast models were pointing to an “extreme” event.

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Stockdale said this year’s El Nino is unlike anything he’s seen in more than three decades of tracking the phenomenon.
“It’s absolutely true to say that we’ve never had an El Nino forecast this strong and this consistent across (forecast) models,” he said at a media briefing.

Stockdale said it would be a “very, very big surprise” if the event failed to break the record. Stating that El Niño warms the surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, causing worldwide changes in wind, pressure and precipitation patterns, he said, “I would expect it to break records, but there is no guarantee of this.”
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It usually occurs every two to seven years and lasts about nine to 12 months. The recent El Niño, combined with human-caused climate change, contributed to 2023 being the second warmest year in history and 2024 being the highest year of all time.
The weather event can cause drought in some parts of the world and floods in others.