Ocean Cycles - El Niño and La Niña

Join Dr. Peter Carter, Paul Beckwith and Regina Valdez as they discuss and explain the El Niño Southern Oscillation, often referred to as ENSO, and its impact on weather and the trajectory of abrupt climate change.

This video was recorded on May 18th, 2022, and published on June 26th, 2022, and represents the opinions of the discussion participants.

Some of the topics discussed:
- What is ENSO and why is it important?
- How It follows a quasi-periodic cycle. The term ‘quasi’ is used because there's a lot of variability in the period between El Niño events which can vary anywhere between two to seven years.
- What is the Walker Circulation?
- How we are currently in an unusual 3 year long La Niña phase of the cycle.
- How it impacts global weather patterns.
- How there is a 50% chance that we’ll exceed 1.5°C in Global Average Temperature rise within the next 5 years and how this will likely be brought on by the occurrence of an El Niño event.
- How the southern hemisphere was severely impacted by the last El Niño that occurred in 2015-2016. How there is a correlation between this event and an observed rate of increase in the CO2 atmospheric concentration.
- Given the current emissions trajectory that we’re on, the frequency of El Niño events could double.
- and more. . .

Links:
- What are El Niño and La Niña?

- Walker Circulation

- Global warming: Earth has 50% chance of exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius in next 5 years, scientists say

- 2014–2016 El Niño event

- Definition of Extreme El Niño and Its Impact on Projected Increase in Extreme El Niño Frequency

- What is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in a nutshell?

Panelists:
Dr. Peter Carter - MD, Expert IPCC Reviewer and the director of the Climate Emergency Institute

Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa in the Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University

Regina Valdez - Program Director, Climate Reality Project, NYC. GreenFaith Fellow and LEED Green Associate

Video Production:
Charles Gregoire - Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for FacingFuture.Earth & the Climate Emergency Forum; Climate Reality Leader

Heidi Brault - Video production and website assistant, Organizer and convener, Metadata technician, COP26 team lead for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum; BA (Psychology); Climate Reality Leader

Our Website:

Attributions:
Background Music:
- Title: Through the City II
- Author: Crowander
- Source: Free Music Archive
- License: CC BY-NC 4.0

[lancechapman]

Peter, your obvious compassion for humanity is both inspiring and heartbreaking. I fear the suffering will be even worse than we can consider.
Regina, thank you for bringing these two clarion voices together!

[lessonsfromvillagelife]

We are witnessing extremely high levels of heat at south-eastern Pakistan, the area called the Great Thar Desert which borders with India. We are living and surviving the wet bulb temperatures. Climate scientists say that people will die in such temperatures by studying models, we don't need such models to know that we are close to death, our bodies (sixth sense) is already telling us that the death is very close to us in such a heat.. Furthermore, our poor governments can not provide us with electricity.

[dianewallace]

Thank you as always. What a enlightening explanation of a complicated topic.

[christill]

Glad to see the regular episodes back rather than those snooze fest legal ones.

[raymondford]

Why no mention of the massive flooding in Australia this year ..five in total .. one town is not rebuild-able. Temperature records are being set all over the globe during La Ninja . Here in British Columbia we are happy to have a rest from the wildfires ( so far ) as it has been very cold with tons of rainfall.

[PaulPukite]

Only can understand El Nino / La Nina cycles by how tidal forcing interacts with the geophysical fluid dynamics.

[dion]

We are having a heatwave in the Pacific Northwest USA this weekend and Astoria Oregon hit an all time record high temperature for this day 6/26 @ 92F. Thank you for the content. I really enjoy your conversations. Good to know some people still care enough about Earth to have the conversation. Greetings from Seaside Oregon

[patar]

One weird thing happened in the 2015-16 El Niño, was that California did not get the rain… vanished over us and hit Texas instead. Unlike the 1998 El Niño that hammered California.

[accessaryman]

great presentation with the data, but it fails in the respect that humans will never be able to change the environment we live in, apart from living sustainably. we need to accept the natural changes and adapt to them, keep our individual spaces clean and tidy, free of pollution.

[terrencecescon]

The lack of knowledge of the causes for cycle changes calls into question the ability to predict in the long run. Whether or not the weather patterns will cause global or local effects is just not known. The patterns are generalities; but the details matter and widely vary. Thus we cannot say that El Nino southern oscillation WILL cause anything. We are very ignorant of these extremely complicated systems.

[Nonconceptuality]

I was a wildland firefighter in Saskatchewan in 2015, which was the record year for fires in the province.

[robinhood]

If there is one thing that isn't getting the talk time that it should, regarding climate, it's just how bad air pollution is for us now. Not how bad it will be in 50 years, or how bad it might be if we don't take it seriously.
Air pollution, at levels currently considered not harmful, are affecting the human body at a cellular level, causing oxidative stress and inflammation. Each and every disease which has an inflammatory aspect is being considerably exacerbated by the air we breathe. Millions of people die early every year because of the modifications we have made, and are still making, to the air we breathe.

[wadeinn]

March 9 (Reuters) - La Niña has ended and ENSO-neutral conditions are expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring and early summer 2023, a U.S. government weather forecaster said on Thursday, with El Niño possibly forming during summer 2023 and persisting through the fall.

"The forecaster consensus favors ENSO-neutral through summer 2023, with elevated chances of El Niño developing afterwards, " the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center said.

The La Niña weather pattern is characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

There was an over 50% chance of the El Niño weather pattern emerging by the July-August-Septmeber period, the U.S. forecaster highlighted, as some regions braced for a hit to crop production.

[victorschwanberg]

I have been warning people about the dangers of climate change for nearly 30 years and they mostly think I'm crazy especially in the early days. Apart from not using fossil fuels what would you experts suggest governments do at this stage of warming to get back to some form of normality?

[rajwanteerobinson]

Wrote on this topic 2 years ago on climate mission platform and I’m was the only one who has been rehearsing on El Niño & La Niña

[jjessicalynn]

Thank you for this information. I am a climate activist, It seems like “it” has to happen before
people and our governments act. Fossil fuel companies are criminal. Governments are still funding criminal companies. I went to visit the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and I remember the guide telling us that the reef if dying. I didn’t understand why and no one explained to me that fossil fuels were the reason. Even when the Amazon was on fire, I didn’t think about fossil fuels. Our governments, the media, and fossil fuel companies are complicit in the greatest crime ever done to humanity and to the world.

[Will-llgv]

I have 2 questions, first that northern pacific blob that existed back in 2015/16 that put a damper on the El Niño for southern cal., was that from the Fukushima disaster? Secondly what was the condition that existed in 2005/6 because in southern cal, we had the second wettest season on record, ever!

[slussen]

I saw a video a couple years back that in england they had measured that it was 12% more atmospheric moisture, that would represent 1, 8 degress celsius warmer planet, if that was true we must be at atleast at 2 degress celsius warmer planet Today.
has anyone tried to calculate how the planets New Climate/Weather
Equilibrium will be in the future, when the Climate/weather system is
stabilised, according to the new amount of Energy in the system.

[morgothra]

Very good talk guys. Thank you.
I'm seriously interested in why the baseline has moved from 1750 to considerably later. I'd love to know to what degree one might 'handicap' for the moved goalpost.

[jocelynevkb]

Thanks to the team from Darwin, Northern Australia. It's been 2°C warmer up here INSPITE of la Niña! At 36-38 +°C & 80% + Humidity, it's hard to cope, while southern parts of Australia flooded, two years after violent bushfire episodes ... In Northern Italy, a never seen drought is now affecting crops due to lacking alpine snow falls in 2021/22 ... A similar situation in the Himalayas, with even more dire consequences for the Mio of subsistence farming communities which depend from melt water. As for Africa & South America, the ever increasing number of climate refugees speak for themselves.
How to curtail human greed for fossil fuels while wars were/are being fought FOR or WITH these Climate annihilating finite resources? Through the publication and mass spreading of Scientific Data & demanding our politicians act on the global Climate Emergency situation NOW! 'All' it takes for the survival of Ecosystem Earth is a shift to subsidise research & implement Renewable energy sources. Big Ask but Time is truly Running OUT.