An El Niño has formed amid the warmer-than-normal waters in the tropical Pacific. Now it's a question of how intense the phenomenon will be, and where effects like heat and drought will strike.
A potentially strong El Niño weather pattern will likely emerge this summer and persist through the rest of the year. The hottest years on record generally occur in years when El Niño is active.
Scientists calculate that last year was one of the three hottest on record, along with 2024 and 2023. The trend indicates that warming could be speeding up, climate monitoring teams reported.
Forecasters say the warming climate pattern El Niño is officially over. Its cooling counterpart, La Niña, could develop as soon as July — just in time to exacerbate an above-average hurricane season.
El Niño helped drive global average temperatures to new records over the last year. Forecasters say it's waning, but that 2024 may still be one for the record books.
For the 10th consecutive month, Earth set a new monthly record for global heat — with both air temperatures and the world's oceans hitting an all-time high, the European Union climate agency said.
2023 was significantly hotter than any year going back to at least the late 1800s. The coming decades will be even hotter if humans don't rapidly move away from burning fossil fuels, scientists warn.
Most of the country is predicted to be warmer than normal with that warmth stretching north from Tennessee, Missouri, Nebraska and Nevada, along with nearly all of California, say federal forecasters.
The natural climate pattern known as El Niño has officially begun. It exacerbates human-caused climate change, driving even hotter temperatures and other dangerous weather.
