El Nino weather ‘could be as bad as 1998’, says Nasa

According to the USA space agency, the El Nino we are now experiencing will bring more wild weather in the new year.

In an interview with the Guardian.com, top British meteorologist Adam Scaife said the weather phenomenon is typical of an early winter El Nino.

Two strikingly similar satellite sea surface images released by NASA have caught the interest of weather watchers across the globe.

In Australia, high temperatures and extremely dry conditions have fanned bushfires in South Australia and Victoria. Rather, it’s a naturally occurring cycle, coming around every four to seven years or so, that brings unusually warm temperatures to the Pacific Ocean, generally with significant consequences for global weather patterns. “Now we’re preparing to see the flip side of nature’s water cycle – the arrival of steady, heavy rains and snowfall”. This year’s is believed to be among the strongest El Nino events ever recorded.

El Nino has also severely affected the United Kingdom, causing massive flooding and forcing thousands of residents to leave their homes.

“Some scientists have found that human-caused climate change may increase the intensity of El Nino events, because a warmer atmosphere means more moisture in the air, a key ingredient in the energetics that drives El Nino”, Mann said in his email.

And this effect has manifested itself in other places besides the UK.

It bears “a striking resemblance” to one from December 1997, the agency says, “the signature of a big and powerful El Nino”. Floods, record rains, ice storms, and hurricanes earmark that year’s El-Nino. Those include warmer-than-average temperatures over western and central Canada, and over the western and northern United States.

El Niño, which can be translated as “The Kid” or “The Boy”, has already created havoc around the world, NASA said. Typical El Niño effects are likely to develop over North America during the upcoming winter season.