GENEVA, July 4 (Reuters) - Temperatures are expected to soar across large parts of the world after the El Nino weather pattern emerged in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years, the World Meteorological Organization said on Tuesday.
El Nino, a warming of water surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean, is linked to extreme weather conditions from tropical cyclones to heavy rainfall to severe droughts.
The world’s hottest year on record, 2016, coincided with a strong El Nino - though experts says climate change has fuelled extreme temperatures even in years without the phenomenon.
Even that record could soon be broken, according to the WMO.
The last couple of years La Niña masked some of the extend of global warming. This year’s record El Niño might become really crazy. Ocean temperature records of the last few months are already a eery sign.