Some scientists predict that La Niñas and El Niños will become more severe as global temperatures rise
LAST SUMMER in Australia didn’t look like the postcards. In October 2020, giant hailstorms struck south-eastern Queensland, hammering some suburbs with stones the size of cricket balls. March brought the worst floods in half a century to New South Wales. At least two people died and over 20,000 were evacuated. Hundreds of homes in western Sydney were subsumed as rivers broke their banks. The violent conditions were fanned by La Niña.
The effects can be devastating to regions throughout the tropics. A strong La Niña brings destructive storms to Australia and parts of Asia, because heat and moisture rise off warm waters which pool around them, forming clouds, then rain. During La Niña in 1998, flooding in China killed thousands and displaced over 200m people, and over half of Bangladesh’s landmass was subsumed.
Outside Asia, La Niña has the opposite effect: it fuels droughts in parts of Africa and the Americas. A collapse in food production triggered by La Niña in 2011 was followed by a famine in Somalia which killed 260,000 people and left 10m people in the Horn of Africa hungry.
What of climate change? La Niñas temporarily cool global average temperatures and mask the warming caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. For instance, 2021 is likely to be between the fifth and seventh hottest year on record, but would have been warmer without the cooling effect of two back-to-back La Niña events. Climate change may also alter ENSO cycles.
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