El Niño climate patterns supercharged by burning of fossil fuels, study finds

A series of strong El Niño climatic patterns in recent decades, such as the “Godzilla” event currently brewing that is set to warp weather around the world, have been supercharged by the broader overheating of the planet caused by the burning of fossil fuels, a major new study has found.El Niño is a naturally occurring phenomenon, taking place every two to seven years, when the waters of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean heat up, causing a cascade of impacts around the world. The latest developing El Niño, set to peak later this year, is set to be the strongest in living memory and has been informally dubbed a “Godzilla” event.It’s well understood that El Niño, which typically brings a surge of global heat, further amplifies the escalating climate crisis, with next year almost certain to be the hottest on record globally. But the new research has established that the reverse is also the case: human-caused global heating is making El Niño itself more intense when it does arrive.“Our findings suggest El Niño can supercharge global warming but also global warming can supercharge El Niño – that is what we are seeing,” said Julia Cole, a climate researcher at the University of Michigan, who led the new study, published in Science.“We are seeing a trend of stronger El Niños and the one we have now is consistent with that trend – it’s not a fluke. We are seeing a shift where El Niño doesn’t look like what it did prior to industrial times. That is bad news for climate hazards and for people, particularly those who are badly impacted and yet have done little to cause climate change.”As the world has heated up due to the use of fossil fuels, a string of recent “super” El Niño events has provided extra acceleration, with intense events causing the global temperature record to fall in 1998, then 2016 and then further in 2024.Such strong El Niño episodes have become far more common as overall global temperatures have risen, scientists found in the new research, which painstakingly analyzed the composition of large boulder-like deposits of coral fossils found on the Galápagos Islands.These old corals, which date to 1,000 years ago, contain chemical compositions that indicate what the sea surface temperature was like when they were alive. The Galápagos, situated off the coast of mainland Ecuador, is “right in the heart of El Niño country”, Cole said, where surrounding waters heat up during such an event.While El Niños remained fairly stable for most of this long period, things started to change around the time the world started to mass industrialize in the late 19th century. This process has become even more extreme in the past 40 years, with El Niños’ variability now around 37% higher than during preindustrial times.“After the El Niño in 1982, we start seeing much more variability; it’s a lot more extreme and looks like nothing in the previous 1,000 years,” said Cole, whose team managed to rule out any random or naturally occurring reason for this switch.“What surprised me was how consistent it was. There is just such a large, distinct difference between what has been happening in the last 40 years compared to preindustrial times.”The findings could help provide an answer to one of the more vexing questions in climate Science, which has until now been unclear, on whether the climate crisis is significantly changing the strength of El Niño events.“This is a strong indication that climate change may already be amplifying El Niño events,” said Samantha Stevenson-Karl, a University of California, Santa Barbara scientist and study co-author. “If that’s true, then really large events like the one that seems to be brewing in the tropical Pacific right now might become more common in the future.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSuch a scenario is set to have profound impacts upon countries already dealing with growing incidences of heatwaves, wildfires and flooding worsened by the climate crisis. As El Niño gathers strength, caused by the weakening of trade winds that usually push surface heat to the western Pacific, parts of South America and the southern US often face heavier rainfall and floods.In India, meanwhile, the monsoon season is typically reduced by El Niño, while countries such as Indonesia and Australia face drier conditions, triggering droughts. The huge El Niño event that is currently growing could push about 50 million people worldwide into acute hunger before the end of next year due to the impact upon food production, a recent forecast found.The understanding that the climate crisis is also making El Niño more severe should prompt countries to ramp up their adaption ahead of such events, such as the food stockpiling that India is currently undertaking, Cole said.“We can prepare and try to adapt,” she added. “But we also need to look at the root cause, which is the fossil fuels we are burning every day. We need to get away from greenhouse gas-producing technologies as quickly as possible.”Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, who was not involved in the research, said the paper was an “important validation” of model predictions that El Niño events would strengthen with global heating.“It underscores that a substantial share of the damage from the upcoming El Niño should be linked to our fossil-fuel-driven economy,” he said. “The findings reinforce the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels to climate-safe renewable energy.”