El Nino ties intensity record, scientist says

The strengthening El Nino weather pattern has tied for the most intense on record on a widely used metric, climatologist Zeke Hausfather said Monday.

Hausfather, a Berkeley Earth scientist and co-author of UN climate change reports, said the sea surface temperature anomaly in the tropical Pacific now stands at 3.07C, tying the 2015-2016 El Nino.

He said September was very likely to have the highest monthly anomalies on record, barring an unexpected change in the coming week. His figures, published on the Climate Brink dashboard, use National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite and buoy sea surface records for the Nino 3.4 region of the Pacific.

NOAA itself has shifted to a newer measure, the Relative Oceanic Nino Index, which compares warming in the Nino 3.4 region with warming across the wider tropical belt. On that measure, the current El Nino is still below the record, though it is expected to eventually break it.

El Nino is the warming phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation in the tropical Pacific. It can bring hotter and drier conditions to some places and cooler and wetter conditions to others.

The current El Nino is already affecting some regions. In Central America, drought is killing animals and crops and limiting water for the Panama Canal, where authorities have cut traffic. In Indonesia, it is blamed for drought that has fuelled wildfires.