Science Snippets: Is the Beginning of El Niño the End of Us?

 

AVID Audio Course Description (Conservation Biology)

 

 

Latest Peer-Reviewed Journal Article:

McPherson, Guy R., Beril Sirmack, and Ricardo Vinuesa. March 2022. Environmental thresholds for mass-extinction events. Results in Engineering (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2022.100342.

 

Draft Script:

An El Niño Southern Oscillation causes heat and greenhouse gases to be released from the world’s ocean. As I have explained previously in this space, the ocean acts like a battery, storing heat and greenhouse gases. An El Niño Southern Oscillation—ENSO—causes release of heat and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most-recent strong ENSO occurred in 1997-1998. We are currently in the midst of the longest stretch without a strong ENSO during at least the last 75 years.

 

ENSO is one of the most important climate phenomena on Earth because it can greatly alter the global atmospheric circulation. In doing so, precipitation and temperature are changed.

 

ENSO and its long version, El Niño Southern Oscillation, have an interesting history. Many decades ago, back when essentially all the people fishing from the ocean were men, fishermen noticed that the warming of coastal waters off South America occurred every so often around late December. They referred to the warming ocean as El Niño, which is Spanish for male child, in connection with the Christmas holiday.

 

English physician and mathematician Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker and Norwegian-American meteorologist Jacob Bjerknes are credited with scientifically discovering and describing the El Niño Southern Oscillation. During the early 1920s, Walker empirically identified a periodic variation in atmospheric pressure over the Indo-Pacific which he christened the Southern Oscillation. During the 1960s, Bjerknes posited a physical mechanism to explain the atmospheric features of this phenomenon over the equatorial Pacific. With a nod to his predecessor Walker, Bjerknes called this the Walker Circulation. Over time, the event became known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation. If you’re keeping score, there are three phases: the cooling phenomenon known as the La Niña, the warming phenomenon known as El Niño, and the neutral phase.

 

Now, then: back to the present, or at least the recent past. According to a press release from the World Meteorological Organization dated March 1st, 2023, there is a relatively high probability that the ongoing, persistent La Niña phase will soon end. According to World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas, “If we do now enter an El Niño phase, this is likely to fuel another spike in global temperatures.”

 

This is important. Bear in mind that we are currently in the midst of a triple-dip La Niña. It appears this cooling phase is coming to an end, and will be replaced by a warming ENSO. The ongoing La Niña has been cooling the planet, but not enough. In fact, the latest 8-year period was the warmest on record despite the cooling impact of La Niña.

 

Earth last experienced a significant ENSO in 2014-2016. The impact of this event was to warm the planet, in addition to the warming underway as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Because of that significant ENSO in 2014-2016 and abrupt climate change, 2016 remains the warmest year on record to date. Will the ENSO likely to appear soon give the planet a new, warmer record? If so, and ifit coincides with stunningly rapid warming from the first ice-free Arctic Ocean for many millennia—as seems likely, based on evidence I’ve presented in this space previously—will the double whammy of ENSO and lack of Arctic ice spell our demise?

 

Well, we don’t know. We soon will, though. Based on evidence discovered by other scholars, I strongly suspect either a strong ENSO or loss of ice on the Arctic Ocean will super-heat the planet very quickly. Tack on loss of aerosol masking as industrial activity declines, and I suspect we’re about to experience a really rotten series of events. Will this series of events include loss of habitat for human animals? Sadly, I think it will.

 

How will we act when habitat for our species begins disappearing even more rapidly than it has so far? How will you act? After all, we represent nothing more than the sum total of all of us. If you behave in a manner for which your mother and grandmother would be proud, and I do, too, then perhaps we can face our extinction with decency. Perhaps the best version of each of us will emerge. Perhaps we can retain our integrity in the face of our individual deaths. Maybe, just maybe, we can all live in a manner consistent with this line from southwestern American writer and public figure Edward Abbey: “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Maybe, just maybe, that sentiment applies to all of us, not merely the occasional man.

 

We will see, won’t we? Good luck to us all.