Amanda Maycock

Yes, that's pretty much spot on. So typically in the Pacific, the winds blow from the east towards the west and drive the warm waters towards what we call the warm pool region near the Philippines. And in the eastern side, we have the upwelling of cold, deep waters, which are very nutrient rich. But when we have the onset of an El Nino event, like we're seeing at the moment, those winds slow down. And so that blowing of the waters is reduced.

We've also seen over the last six months or so a build-up of very warm waters underneath the surface of the ocean, about a couple of hundred meters below the surface. We've now got a very large body of water with temperatures that are more than six degrees above normal. So that's kind of sitting there waiting to emerge up to the surface.

Juuri niin. Eli vahva evaporaatio ja konveksio-aktiivisuus atmosfeerissa, eli ne ovat koko atmosfeerin sisällä, jotka ovat vahvistuneet ilmastonmukaisuuden. Ne olisivat yleensä keskittyneet maan päästä, jossa on lämpöä. Kun lämpöä on lämpenyt maan päästä,

around the time that we see a transition between the different phases of the El Niño cycle so last winter we had what we call a La Niña event that was when the surface waters were colder than normal and in the springtime that previous event has died away it's decayed we're back to near normal conditions but we're ahead of starting to see the build-up of the next event which is coming this year so that spring predictability barrier

se on hieman vaikeampi tehdä näkökulmia alkuperäisestä vuodesta. Mutta kun menemme eteenpäin ja aloitamme nähdä tapaamisen alkuperäistä, näkökulmiamme ovat paljon vahvempia, ja näemme nyt hyvin suurta mahdollisuutta, että El Niño tulee tämän vuoden loppuun. Eli se on melko hyvin loppunut, mutta ei välttämättä, kuinka vahva se on. Se on oikein. Tällä hetkellä näkökulma tarkoittaa, että on noin kaksi tai kolme mahdollisuutta, että se tulee olemaan vahva tai todella vahva tapaaminen tänä kesänä.

That's right. So the Pacific is a bit like an engine house for the climate system. All of that strong convective activity and that heat exchange really drives the whole global climate system. So yes, we would typically expect to see flooding in parts of northern Peru and southern Ecuador. We would have droughts in Indonesia and in the Amazon basin, but even further afield we see changes to climate.

Rainfall in Africa, we'd expect to see drought in southern Africa and in Australia as well. I mean, these droughts and floods, they have a pretty devastating impact on people's lives, on farmers' productivity and so on. Is that what we should be preparing for? Yeah, so we do see at a global scale, we can see a decline in the global agricultural and food stocks that come from those regional impacts, particularly affecting the sort of breadbasket regions of the world where we have very large amounts of agriculture.

There's been some estimates made that the previous strong El Niños that you mentioned from 2015-16 and the previous one before that, 1997 and 1998, they estimated that there were trillions of dollars of economic losses globally that were resulting from the impacts of that event.

What we know is that since the last very strong El Niño event, about a decade ago from now, the global average temperature has increased by around another quarter of a degree Celsius.

Aikaisemmin vuoden jälkeen, kun El Niño-yhteyden jälkeen on hieman vähentynyt globaaliin, se voi olla noin 0,2 °C. Nyt lisäämme noin 0,2 °C vähentyvän El Niño-yhteyden jälkeen pitkän aikavälin lämpötilanteen ympärillä. Jokainen mahdollisuus on, että jos yhteyden jälkeen on vähentynyt vähentyvän jälkeen, kuten tarkoitus tarkoittaa,

We'd be looking at the potential for another record-breaking global temperature next year. The previous record temperature was in 2024. The global temperature then was 1.5 degrees.

It's really critical to emphasise that these types of observations that are being collected at the moment within the Tropical Pacific Observing System is a critical part of our ability to make these forecasts over many months in the future. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us. Amanda Maycock is at Leeds University. Gareth, do you stay with us? I think you've got more to tell us later in the programme. Yes, there's more where that came from, Roland.