El Nino to last until April 2024, pushing record temperatures
The ongoing El Nino weather pattern is set to last until at least April 2024, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday, pushing up temperatures in a year already on track to be the warmest on record.
The WMO said there was a 90% likelihood that the naturally occurring event will continue through the northern hemisphere winter, following a similar projection last month from a US government forecaster.
El Nino is a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific, and it can provoke extreme weather phenomena from wildfires to tropical cyclones and prolonged droughts.
The phenomenon is already spurring calamities across the globe, with the stakes expected to be higher for emerging markets more exposed to swings in food and energy prices.
The WMO said in the same statement that 2023 is on track to be the warmest year on record. The previous record year was 2016 due to the one-two punch of an exceptionally strong, naturally-occurring El Nino and the impact of warming induced by the burning of fossil fuels.
Driest October in Australia
Also on Wednesday, Australia’s National Weather Bureau said the country recorded the driest October in more than 20 years due to an El Nino weather pattern which has seen hot, dry conditions hit crop yields in one of the world's largest wheat exporters.
In its regular drought report, the Bureau of Meteorology said last month was Australia's driest October since 2002, with rainfall 65 per cent below the 1961–1990 average.
It said every part of Australia except the state of Victoria had below-average rainfall and Western Australia state -- by far the biggest grain-exporting region -- saw its driest October on record.
After three years of plentiful rain, the El Nino weather phenomenon has brought hot and dry weather to Australia, with September the driest since records began in 1900.
Rain in some parts of the country in early October halted a rapid decline in projected crop yields but the country's wheat harvest is still expected to fall by around 35 percent this year to some 26 million tons.
"Areas of (rainfall) deficiency have generally expanded and become more severe in south-west Western Australia, south-eastern Queensland, and parts of the Top End in the Northern Territory and far north Queensland. Deficiencies eased in southern Victoria and eastern Tasmania," the bureau said.
Its long-range forecast predicts below-median rainfall through to at least January in northern, western and southern Australia.
Reuters
