
How will global warming affect El Niño in the 21st Century?
El Niño remains the largest climate phenomenon that occurs frequently producing droughts, floods, wildfires, dust and snow storms, fish kill, and even elevated risks of civil conflicts. The theater of action for El Niño is the tropical Pacific Ocean but its global reach costs the global community tens of billion dollars each time.
El Niño’s occur every two-to-seven years with very strong El Niño’s occurring about every 15 years. How the its frequency or the time between two events and strength will change because of global warming remains a grand challenge for climate models. This also impacts projections of future climate since El Niños redistribue the heat gathered by the ocean between two El Niño events to cause a mini global warming. The most recent projection of global warming imp...