Trend of record high temperatures may remain during January & February: Copernicus

El Nino is expected to reach peak intensity during January or February before its hold tapers off, experts from Copernicus Climate Change Service have said. El Nino has a high correlation with warmer summers and weaker monsoon rains in India. (File photo) However, experts said that El Nino’s impact on ocean and surface temperatures are expected to last for some time.

Wrap up the year gone by & gear up for 2024 with HT! Click here The EU climate monitor confirmed on Tuesday that 2023 was the warmest calendar year in global temperature data records going back to 1850. Last year had a global average temperature of 14.98°C, 0.17°C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2016 and 1.48°C warmer than the 1850 1900 pre industrial level.

But it is too early to say whether global average temperatures will be lower in 2024 compared to 2023, scientists said, adding that sea surface temperatures are expected to record extremely high temperatures at least until March. “We are close to an El Nino peak now. We are expecting a rapid decline in El Nino conditions to ENSO neutral by spring of 2024,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) during a press conference on Tuesday.

Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are above average across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. The tropical Pacific atmospheric anomalies are consistent with El Nino. El Nino is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter, with a transition to ENSO neutral favored during April June 2024 (60% chance), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on January 8.

Since March 2023, positive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the eastern Pacific Ocean gradually expanded and shifted westward. In October and November 2023, SST anomalies increased in the central and east central Pacific. Since early December, the positive SST anomalies have persisted. In the far eastern Pacific, positive SST anomalies have been gradually weakening, NOAA said.

Also Read: Preparing for a warmer world “We expect the current El Nino to peak this month or next but there is a lag in impact on current temperatures. The first quarter of 2024 will likely continue the trend of the past year in terms of temperatures. For ocean temperatures, they are likely to continue to increase till March.

Though we can expect that impacts of El Nino will dissipate later this year, we are uncertain how ocean temperatures will evolve,” Burgess added. It’s also important to note that El Nino has a minor impact on record temperatures rising globally. “We had two days in November when it exceeded the 2°C threshold over pre industrial levels.

El Nino is part of the story but a major contribution to such warming is from concentration of greenhouse gas emissions. El Nino developed and built around the world but there is only a small contribution from the current El Nino event. 2023 would have been an exceptional year even without El Nino. Record ocean temperatures have been recorded since April so warming started well before El Nino developed,” Burgess said.

Copernicus experts said initial forecasts suggest the first two months of 2024 are likely to record unusually warm temperatures bringing the past 12 months mean to 1.5°C above pre industrial levels. “More immediate is the possibility that the twelve consecutive months ending in January and/or February 2024 will exceed the 1.5°C level according to ERA5, as January and February 2023 were not especially warm months,” Copernicus said on Tuesday.

El Nino occurs on average every two to seven years, and typically lasts nine to 12 months. It is a naturally occurring climate pattern associated with warming of the ocean surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. El Nino has a high correlation with warmer summers and weaker monsoon rains in India.

On whether it was expected that 2023 will be the warmest year, Copernicus said “Yes and No” “Yes, in the sense that a year as warm as 2023 was seen as being inevitable in due course due to a combination of continued climate warming and an occurrence of El Nino,” but also no because “there were additional unforeseen factors some of which are still under scientific investigation that contributed to the extremity of global temperatures in 2023.

Forecasts from ten climate prediction centres were indicating late in 2022 that there was only a very low probability that the annual temperature for 2023 would be as high as it was.” Burgess said it needs to be investigated whether 2023 was a tipping point. Unlock a world of Benefits with HT! From insightful newsletters to real time news alerts and a personalized news feed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now! Get Latest India News and Earthquake Today along with Latest News and Top Headlines from India and around the world SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Share this article Share Via Copy Link.