The oceans just reached their hottest temperature on record as El Niño looms

Photo: La Niña has ended and El Niño will form during hurricane season, forecasters say.

Here are 6 things to watch for:

CNN — Scientists have watched in astonishment as ocean temperatures have steadily risen over the past several years – even as the cooling La Niña phenomenon had a firm grip on the Pacific. The oceans have been record-warm for the past four years, scientists reported in January. Then in mid-March, climatologists noted that global sea surface temperature climbed to a new high.

The incredible trend worries experts about what could lie ahead, especially as forecasts predict El Niño is on its way starting this summer – and along with it, impacts like extreme heat, dangerous tropical cyclones and a significant threat to fragile coral reefs.

La Niña and El Niño are natural phenomena in the tropical Pacific Ocean; La Niña is marked by cooler-than-average ocean temperatures, while El Niño brings warmer-than-average temperatures. Both have major influence weather across the globe. And a switch to El Niño will almost assuredly bring warmer global temperatures along with it.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles, said there is already a “dramatic transition” from La Niña to El Niño happening in the tropical Pacific.

Layered on top of human-caused global heating, the signs point to El Niño ushering in severe and unprecedented impacts.

“Right now, the atmosphere and the ocean are both in sync and screaming ‘El Niño rapid development’ over the next few months,” he said.

The last three years have still been some of the warmest on record, even with La Niña’s cooling effect. “We’re now switching that off,” Professor Adam Scaife, head of long-range prediction at the UK Met Office, told CNN.

It’s unclear how strong the coming El Niño will be – some models predict it could reach super-strength, others suggest it will be more moderate. But what is clear is that, layered on top of human-caused global heating, the signs point to El Niño ushering in severe and unprecedented impacts for many parts of the world.

Here are six weather and climate extremes to look out for.

El Niño could – for the first time – push the world past 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above the pre-industrial levels of the mid-to-late 1800s.

Countries pledged in the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees – and preferably to 1.5 degrees – compared to pre-industrial temperatures. Scientists consider 1.5 degrees of warming as a key tipping point, beyond which the […]

Full article: The oceans just reached their hottest temperature on record as El Niño looms. Here are 6 things to watch for