“El Niño 2021: World Meteorological Organization Predicts Increased Global Temperatures and New Heat Records”

The meteorological phenomenon El Niño is likely to increase global temperatures a little later this year and will result in new heat records being set. This was announced by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) at the United Nations, quoted by the Reuters agency.

The WMO also said that over the next few years, the La Niña weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, which often lowers global temperatures, will change to El Niño, its warm counterpart. There is almost a 60% chance that this will happen in the May-July period this year. This probability will increase to 70-80% between July and September, according to the WMO.

“The next few months, between May and July, we have a 60% chance of entering an El Niño phase. That probability will increase to 70%, if we consider the period from July to August. And even up to 80% if we look at the temperatures of last August. This is where we are now. We expect, of course, that this will change the weather and the climate on a global scale,” Wilfran Mufuma Okia, head of the WMO regional climate forecasting department, told journalists in Geneva today.

Asked if it was known how much the Earth’s temperature would rise, he said there was “no current estimate”. The WMO could only predict the strength or duration of El Niño.

„The warmest year was 2016, data from our report indicate. So we expect in the next two years to have a serious increase in the global temperature,” added Wilfran Mufuma Okia.

The El Niño weather phenomenon is associated with rising global temperatures, both droughts in some parts of the world and floods in others. It last happened in 2018-2019. Since 2020, the world has been more under the influence of its cooling version of La Niña. Or to put it another way, La Niña acts as a “temporary brake” on rapidly rising temperatures.