Tag Archives: El Niño

‘Omen of the Future’: Off-The-Charts Hot Oceans Scare Scientists

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After 2023 was the hottest year in human history, experts warn that 2024 “has strong potential to be another record-breaking year.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 2-27-2024 by Common Dreams

Coral bleaching. Photo: blamethepeople/flickr

While global policymakers continue to drag their feet on phasing out planet-heating fossil fuels, scientists around the world “are freaking out” about high ocean temperatures, as they told The New York Times in reporting published Tuesday.

A “super El Niño” has expectedly heated up the Pacific, but Times reporter David Gelles spoke with ocean experts from Miami to Cambridge to Sydney about record heat in the North Atlantic as well as conditions around the poles.

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Panama Canal drought: Rolling ecological crisis is raising prices everywhere

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Climate change and El Niño are causing global shortages of everything from Barbie dolls to natural gas

By James Meadway. Published 9-21-2023 by openDemocracy

The Agua Clara (Clear Water) Locks at the Atlantic (Caribbean Sea) end of the canal. Photo: Dan Lundberg/flickr/CC

It’s been another summer of extreme weather and the relentless drumbeat of climate change syncopating with the warm-water Pacific Ocean cycle of El Niño has reverberated across the globe.

Floods in the Balkans and North Africa have killed thousands, wildfires have raged across much of the Mediterranean, India’s rice crop has been hit by drought and Canada’s wheat harvests by floods. Meanwhile, in Central America, the driest weather in decades is menacing one of the most important transport arteries on earth.

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‘Ancient Heat Records Will Be Broken’: Southern Europe Braces for Unprecedented Temperatures

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“If the disasters we’re seeing this month aren’t enough to shake us out of that torpor, then the chances of our persevering for another hundred and twenty-five thousand years seem remote.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-16-2023 by Common Dreams

People cool off in a water fountain during a heatwave, at Trafalgar Square in London. Photo: Vatican News

Southern Europe faced dangerously high temperatures on Sunday amid a continent-wide heatwave that’s expected to get worse in the coming days, potentially shattering longstanding records as the climate crisis rages.

Reuters reported that a “new anticyclone dubbed Charon, who in Greek mythology was the ferryman of the dead, pushed into the region from north Africa on Sunday and could lift temperatures above 45°C (113°F) in parts of Italy early this week,” prompting Italian officials to issue heat advisories for more than a dozen cities on Sunday.

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In ‘Stern Warning Sign,’ Ocean and Air Temps Break May and June Records

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Some scientists predict that 2023 could be the warmest year on record, as a developing El Niño exacerbates the impacts of the climate crisis.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 6-16-2023 by Common Dreams

A large cluster of wildfires burns in Alberta, Canada, as seen from NOAA’s GOES-18 satellite on May 5, 2023; May 2023 was North America’s warmest May in NOAA’s 174-year climate record. (Photo: NOAA)

Following a May of record ocean temperatures and a June of record air temperatures, scientists are warning that 2023 could be the hottest year on record.

For a brief period in June, average global air temperatures even topped 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, the temperature goal enshrined by the Paris climate agreement.

“The world has just experienced its warmest early June on record, following a month of May that was less than 0.1°C cooler than the warmest May on record,” the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said in a statement. “Monitoring our climate is more important than ever to determine how often and for how long global temperatures are exceeding 1.5°C. Every single fraction of a degree matters to avoid even more severe consequences of the climate crisis.”

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Climate Emergency Persists as 2020 Ties for Earth’s Hottest Year on Record

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“It took over 200 years for [atmospheric CO2] levels to increase by 25%, but now just over 30 years later we are approaching a 50% increase.”

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 1-8-2021

The Apple Fire burns into the night north of Beaumont, California on Friday, July 31, 2020. Photo: Brody Hessin/CC

Highlighting global campaigners’ demands for urgent and bold climate action, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Friday that despite coronavirus-related lockdowns, 2020 tied with 2016 for being the warmest year on record and closed out the warmest decade on the books.

“It is notable that 2020 matches the 2016 record despite a cooling La Niña, whereas 2016 was a record year that began with a strong warming El Niño event,” the agency known as C3S said. Continue reading →

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Climate Change is Here and Now, Dire NOAA Report Warns

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‘The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle. They are playing out before us, in real time’

By Nadia Prupis, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-2-2016

Last year's record heat was fueled by a combination of the effects of global warming and one of the strongest El Niño events on record since at least 1950. (Photo: Project LM/flickr/cc)

Last year’s record heat was fueled by a combination of the effects of global warming and one of the strongest El Niño events on record since at least 1950. (Photo: Project LM/flickr/cc)

Environmental records of all kinds are being shattered as climate change takes effect in real time, scientists warned on Tuesday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) released its annual State of the Climate report with the dire warning that 2015 was the hottest year on record since at least the mid-to-late 19th century, confirming the “toppling of several symbolic milestones” in global temperature, sea level rise, and extreme weather.

“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Penn State, told the Guardian. “They are playing out before us, in real time. The 2015 numbers drive that home.” Continue reading →

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