A dramatic animation tracking sea temperatures across the Pacific has captured the rapid transformation from La Niña conditions to what Earth Sciences NZ says could become the strongest El Niño on record.
The graphic shows swing from La Niña conditions early in the year to a rapidly intensifying El Niño, a transition Earth Sciences NZ's Chris Brandolino said was noteworthy for how quickly it happened.
"Typically, we would spend time in neutral, which is neither La Niña or El Niño. But the fact that we went from one end of the spectrum to the other is certainly noteworthy."
The animation demonstrated two things, he said: the speed of the shift and the magnitude of the event.
As the sequence ends, a wedge of red deepens along the equator from the South American coast west toward the international dateline.
"It's that deeper red that indicates where the ocean temperatures are most unusually warm," Brandolino said.
"It's pretty unusual to see El Niño intensifying to where it is now at this stage of its life cycle."
El Niño events typically strengthen over several months, meaning the current intensity so early in the event is unusual.
Brandolino said there was a high probability, though not a certainty, that the event would set a record.
"This El Niño event is expected to go down as the strongest on record, and because of that, we're likely to see more profound impacts here in New Zealand," he said.
He said those impacts were beginning to show, and were likely to become more pronounced over the following days and into the following weekend as more typical El Niño weather patterns set in.
That meant more persistent and more intense winds from the westerly quarter, which Brandolino said was a hallmark of the pattern.
"Our wind tends to blow more regularly, more persistently, more intensely, from that westerly quarter direction," he said.
He said he expected that kind of weather to become a more regular feature as the country moved into spring.
Brandolino said looking back at previous strong El Niños offered a guide to what might come, with a "theme" emerging from running computer models many times over.
He likened it to a dress-up birthday party.
"You don't know how people are going to come, but you know the theme," he said.
The models point consistently to northern and eastern areas being the driest and the west the wettest, though Brandolino cautioned that a warming climate was muddying the comparison with past events.
"Climate change is making the usefulness of those previous events less reliable," he said.
El Niño is a natural climate pattern, but it is occurring against a backdrop of long-term increased global temperatures.
The World Meteorological Organization has warned the strengthening event will add to already elevated global temperatures, with above-normal temperatures expected across much of the world.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said as the El Niño strengthens it will be “adding fuel to a planet already on fire”, saying fossil fuels were "fanning the flames" and calling for expansion to stop.
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