The Met Office has offered its verdict on El Niño and whether the UK could see a record hot year.
Leading meteorological organisations have confirmed that El Niño has begun this month.
Conditions developed in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years, setting the stage for a surge in global temperatures, and extreme weather events from storms to wildfires across the world.
The World Meteorological Organisation even went as far as warning that some countries would need to take action to save lives.
El Niño is a global weather event who’s impacts stretch across the globe.
It takes place where the ocean warms in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean and weakening trade winds leads to this heat translating into the air, charging the atmosphere and creating a series of knock on effects.
This includes influencing weather in the UK, and during the last El Niño in 2016, the country suffered a record hot year.
Now the Met Office has told the Mirror that it is “very likely” that the country will see a record hot year, either this year or next, thanks to El Niño adding to the existing impacts of anthropogenic climate change.
Grahame Madge, a spokesman for the Met Office, said: “As Michael Mann [a climatologist] put it, think of climate change as being the rising tide then El Niño is the wave riding on top.
“El Niño is not solely responsible for the high temperatures, but when you add it onto the anthropogenic warming … then it’s likely to take global temperatures to a new record year.
“It’s very likely that this year or next will be a new record year surpassing 2016 … there is now a greater likelihood that that rise will be 1.5 or above, which resonates due to the Paris Agreement, which will show how close we’re getting to that threshold.”
This means that the historic climate change agreements, to limit global warming to 1.5C over the 1850-1900 average, will see itself temporarily pipped, reflecting the terrifying climate reality.
Its effects on the UK don’t stop there, even as it may cause forest fires in Australasia and South East Asia.
In a typical El Niño year, Madge said there was a “known connection” for late January and February to be colder than normal.
El Niño is one driver of weather at that time, so whilst it will be trying to create colder conditions, the Met Office spokesman said it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee a great chill.
He added: “There’s a greater chance of colder conditions towards the end of winter, but sometimes that is swamped by a very active weather pattern from the Atlantic.
“The biggest driver for us in winter is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) … this drives weather systems into Europe over winter.
“So if we’ve got El Niño sending a signal for a colder winter, and the NAO for more storms those will have to balance out.
“Just because there is an association between colder end to winter it doesn’t mean we’ll hit a deep freeze, by a degree or so which might not be that noticeable.”
