A La Nina pushes cold water to the top of the mid Pacific. This cools the atmosphere but, like the ice in an esky, the cold water heats up. This happened three times in a row—a LOT of heat has been absorbed!
Quote:Climate models warn of possible ‘super El Niño’ before end of year
Climate researchers say magnitude of predicted weather event uncertain but if an extreme El Niño occurs ‘we’ll need to buckle up’
Climate models around the globe continue to warn of a potential El Niño developing later this year – a pattern of ocean warming in the Pacific that can increase the risk of catastrophic weather events around the globe.
Some models are raising the possibility later this year of an extreme, or “super El Niño”, that is marked by very high temperatures in a central region of the Pacific around the equator.
The last extreme El Niño in 2016 helped push global temperatures to the highest on record, underpinned by human-caused global heating that sparked floods, droughts and disease outbreaks.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said in a Tuesday update that all seven models it had surveyed – including those from weather agencies in the UK, Japan and the US – showed sea surface temperatures passing the El Niño threshold by August.
BoM advise models applied to the Southern hemisphere are less accurate:
Quote:There was a 50% chance of an El Niño developing before the end of the year, the bureau said.
A feature of El Niños is a rise in sea surface temperatures at least 0.8C above the long term average in a region of the central equatorial Pacific. Extreme El Niños feature temperatures in that region of 2C above average.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/12/climate-models-warn-of-po...If the models are wrong we will know that later this year.
Prepare for El Nino—heat, bushfires, destruction of some infrastructure—rail lines may buckle. With three wet years be a lot of vegetation that will be drying starting August. Backburning, clearing of weeds etc etc a must for those in rural areas.