Q&A: ‘Are the warnings all hype?’ – our environment writers answered your El Niño questions
Guardian reporters Jonathan Watts and Gabrielle Canon answered your question climate and extreme weather, from what to expect this winter in the UK to the increasing risk of natural disasters
funkymentalist asks: Unrelated to El Niño, what is the likelihood of the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) shutting down?
Jon says: I don’t think these two things are unrelated. Everything is affected by climate breakdown. And both El Niño and the slowdown of AMOC are related to the staggeringly huge amounts (see this article on zettajoules which I also referred to above) of extra energy that the oceans are being forced to absorb as a result of greenhouse gas burning.
Quick refresher for any readers who are unfamiliar with this topic: “Amoc, or the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is a system of ocean currents that brings heat into the northern Atlantic. Warm surface water from the tropics flows north and releases its heat in the subpolar Atlantic, south of Greenland and west of Britain and Ireland. Then it cools and sinks to a depth of between 2,000m to 3,000 metres before returning south as a cold current. Amoc is one of our planet’s largest heat transport systems, moving the equivalent of 50 times the human energy use, and it has a particularly strong impact on the climate in Europe, affects the ocean’s CO2 uptake and oxygen supply, as well as rainfall patterns in the tropics.”
Gaby says: The name “El Niño” actually harkens back to long before forecasters used the phenomenon to track global weather patterns. Fishermen off the coast of South America began to track unusually warm water that would show up every few years right around Christmas – thus “The Little Boy” referring to the Christ child in Spanish. Scientists adopted the name, and added “La Niña” as its counterpart (when sea surface temperatures cool), and together they became ENSO – the El Niño Southern Oscillation. This year, though, feel free to call it “El Monstruo Gordo!” It’s going to be a big one.
