Many areas of the world, such as the Bay of Bengal, the Philippines and the Caribbean Sea, but also the Amazon and Alaska, risk experiencing record air temperatures until June 2024: the current passage of El Niño, the periodic climate phenomenon that occurs on average every five years, causing strong warming of the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean in the period between December and January, and which has effects on the climate of the entire planet.
This is indicated by the study published in the journal Scientific Reports and led by the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, according to which there is an estimated probability of 90% that the phenomenon will result in high average global temperatures, in the event that El Niño proves strong enough.
Researchers led by Ning Jiang and Congwen Zhu simulated the effects of El Niño between July 2023 and June 2024, also using data recorded in the period 1951-1980.
They thus discovered that, if the phenomenon is of moderate intensity, the areas most at risk of record-breaking air temperatures are the Bay of Bengal and the Philippines.
Instead, if El Niño turns out to be more intense, the Caribbean Sea, the South China Sea and several areas of the Amazon and Alaska will also be affected.
But the effects could extend to average surface temperatures across the globe: with a moderate to strong El Niño, an increase of 1.03 to 1.20 degrees is estimated compared to the average of the reference period 1951-1980.
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