Javier Martín-Vide
Professor of Physical Geography
The confirmation by the World Meteorological Organisation that we are already experiencing an El Niño phenomenon and that it will most probably continue during the second half of the year alerts us to the fact that it will contribute, as has happened in the case of previous El Niños, a thermal plus or addition of a few tenths of a degree centigrade to the global average surface air temperature of the current 2023 or, due to the inertia of the climate system and the possible continuation of the phenomenon, of 2024. As is well known, a few tenths of a degree Celsius more in the global mean air temperature is by no means a negligible variation. In addition, this probable extra warming is coupled, in the same direction, with a strong positive thermal anomaly that has been present for weeks in the waters of the North Atlantic and North Pacific. It is therefore likely that one of the two years in question could be the warmest in instrumental history.
In addition, some weather extremes, such as heat waves and droughts in some regions and torrential rainfall in others, are expected to increase in frequency and intensity. For the record, the most intense El Niño of the 20th century, that of 1982-83, coincided with the torrential rainfall in the Júcar basin that led to the Tous reservoir in October 1982, and with the very heavy rainfall, with floods and landslides, in the Catalan Pyrenees in November of the same year.