According to a recent study looking at global weather patterns, El Niño happens about every 20 years, causing changes in temperature and air pressure along with extreme weather. But now El Niños are predicted to occur twice as often in the next hundred years.
According to a recent study looking at global weather patterns, El Niño happens about every 20 years, causing changes in temperature and air pressure along with extreme weather.
But now these “extreme” El Niños are predicted to occur twice as often in the next hundred years.
Using data that covers weather activity projections over a 200 year period from 1890 to 2090, researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia predict El Niños will hit the Pacific every decade over the next century.
The latest El Niño related storms in the Pacific ended in 2010.
Wenju Cai, lead author of the study from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia: “The western Pacific becomes dry; Australia has drought, heat waves and bushfires; and Indonesia has bushfires. But in Ecuador and northern Peru, the rainfall increases by 10 times and there are big, big problems.”
Another study of El Niño weather shows that climate change might be contributing to the higher frequency of El Niños over the past fifty years.
