British people have been urged to have enough food and water on hand to survive a few days without power or water, as the UN said the El Niño climate phenomenon was “supersizing before our eyes”, exacerbating extreme weather events worldwide. Forecasters say they are braced for the biggest El Niño in 1,000 years, bringing wildfires and floods to parts of the world, and the threat of a wet, stormy winter for the UK. As the British government plans a campaign urging citizens to prepare for national emergencies, Angela Eagle told the Guardian the likelihood of a wild winter showed the importance of having supplies at home.
The environment secretary said: “We’re about to experience probably the largest El Niño that has ever been seen, and that will lead to drier summers, wetter winters, with more extreme storms in this country. So some of it is that kind of preparation for just being a bit more resilient.” El Niño is a natural climate cycle where wind changes over the Pacific lead to rising ocean temperatures and the transfer of huge amounts of heat to the atmosphere. The most recent data, from Monday, shows the temperature of the ocean at the heart of El Niño at 2.6C above the 30-year average.
That is already close to the highest anomaly ever recorded in the satellite data era, 3.1C in 2015, with months to go before the peak is expected. That peak is forecast to reach about 4C in November, according to the average of 14 different models. Zeke Hausfather, a climate analyst, said data from analysis of corals, tree rings and historical documents suggested no El Niño had reached this level in the last millennium.
Any temperature anomaly above 0.5C is classed as an El Niño. The El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years and will pile extra heat into an atmosphere where temperatures are already rising rapidly due to global heating. The combination means 2027 is set to “blow apart” the record and be the hottest year ever recorded.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said: “El Niño is being supersized before our eyes. The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up. The world is in the danger zone of extreme weather.
The race now is between rising risks and our commitment to take climate action and protect people. We must win that race.” Celeste Saulo, secretary general of the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said: “El Niño has the potential to deliver a massive blow to communities and economies across the world. We are already seeing disruption and devastation from droughts and floods and we expect these impacts to increase as El Niño intensifies.” The climate crisis, caused by pollution from fossil fuels, is already supercharging extreme weather and killing people, with the most extreme heatwave ever recorded hitting Europe this summer and leading to at least 35,000 deaths.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
