El Nino ‘strengthening quickly’ with ‘near-100% probability’ of UK getting hit by ‘huge freeze’
El Nino is ‘strengthening rapidly’ just weeks before its expected peak in December, forecasters say, with a ‘near-100% likelihood’ it will persist through February 2027
It’s going to get very, very cold(Image: Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images)
El Niño is “strengthening rapidly” with just weeks to go until its expected peak in December, according to weather experts. El Niño, a natural climate event that occurs every two to seven years in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, has a significant impact on global weather patterns.
It can lead to wetter and stormier conditions across north-west Europe, including the UK, during autumn and early winter, and may also heighten the risk of cold spells later in the winter season. An El Niño is officially declared when sea-surface temperatures in this specific region of the tropical Pacific consistently exceed the norm by at least 0.5C.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) stated in its most recent update that sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific are predicted to reach “record levels” in October, November and December, “reflecting the strengthening of the El Niño event”.
Map shows where sea surface temperatures have risen above average as of October 14(Image: El Niño Live)
Last week, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said: “El Niño is firmly established and strengthening rapidly. WMO forecasts indicate a near-100 per cent likelihood that it will persist through February 2027, potentially being one of the strongest since at least 1950.”, reports the Mirror.
She explained that this near-certainty figure represents a consensus among 13 national and international centres — from Washington to Tokyo to London to Pune — based on real-time exchange of data from ocean buoys, satellites and radiosondes.
For the months of October, November and December, the average sea-surface temperature anomaly is predicted to hit around +3.7C, peaking in December. This would set a new record, beating the previous high of +2.6C, which was recorded between November 2015 and January 2016.
After reaching its peak, El Niño “tends to promote the breakdown of the polar vortex, especially in late winter”, according to the US government’s NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory.
The Met Office explains that the weakening of the polar vortex – a band of strong westerly winds encircling a pool of cold air high in the stratosphere – “may raise the chance of Sudden Stratospheric Warming events, which can increase the potential for cold weather”.
The national weather service has linked several extreme cold and winter snow events to the surface effects of sudden stratospheric warmings, including those in 2009-10 and 2013, as well as the infamous “Beast from the East” in 2018.
The so-called “Big Freeze of 2010”, which saw the winter of 2009-10 become the coldest in three decades at the time, coincided with an El Niño event. However, some scientists argue that past evidence is inconsistent, pointing out that the winter of 2006-2007 was also an El Niño year but was unusually warm.
The Met Office states that strong El Niño events are typically associated with a rise in global average temperatures because additional heat is released from the ocean into the atmosphere, which then spreads around the globe, further warming other ocean basins.
Extraordinarily powerful El Niño events can thus play a part in setting new global temperature records in the year following their peak.
The Met Office points out that the current event is unfolding against a backdrop of long-term climate change caused by human activity, which means its impacts are layered on top of an already warming climate.
