Is it hot enough for you yet? 2015 has almost certainly been the hottest year on record. And don鈥檛 stash the fans away, as there鈥檚 a good chance 2016 will be even hotter, making it three record-breaking years in a row and spelling disaster for corals.
What鈥檚 the recipe for the triple whammy? Take a generous lashing of global warming, add a half-baked El Ni帽o one year, a whopper of an El Ni帽o the next, and then let it stew for a few months. It鈥檚 an updated version of what we had when the biggest El Ni帽o then recorded hit in 1997, causing extreme weather events across the globe and making 1998 the hottest year.
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This time, global warming gave everything a particularly warm head start. Even though the El Ni帽o turned out to be a near miss in 2014, it still crowned that year the new hottest on record. Now El Ni帽o has hit for real, making . But the El Ni帽o is set to last until about May or June, and air temperatures take around four months to catch up with sea surface temperatures, so next year could outdo them all.
And it鈥檚 not just about temperature. The El Ni帽o is messing with the world鈥檚 weather and hitting some ecosystems hard, in combination with other human-made effects, including pollution and overfishing. We are now seeing a global coral bleaching event that could destroy up to 5 per cent of the world鈥檚 reefs.
鈥淲e are now seeing a global coral bleaching event that could destroy 5 per cent of all reefs鈥�
Then there鈥檚 the possibility of La Ni帽a to worry about. Often just as devastating, La Ni帽a reverses her older brother鈥檚 effects, and can cool down surface air, bring drought to the west coast of the Americas and floods to Australia and Indonesia. But the reversal doesn鈥檛 always happen, and models aren鈥檛 very good at predicting a switch this far out. So stay tuned.
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(Image: XL Catlin Seaview Survey)
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淓xtreme weather, killer heat鈥�
