When the dust has settled and the numbers have been crunched, 2016 will almost certainly go down as the hottest year on record. Much of the heat came from man’s fair hand, but it was given a boost by El Nino, the natural warming of the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
At the beginning of 2016, the El Nino conditions were incredibly strong and the temperature of the Pacific was well above average. Only one El Nino event rivalled its strength, and that was the monster event of 1997-98. With such a strong temperature change in the world’s largest ocean, it was inevitable that this was going to have a large impact on the weather around the globe.
Many parts of the world were hit by weather typical of an El Nino event, but even more powerfully than usual. Flooding and landslides in Ethiopia killed more than 100 people, and flooding in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil was the worst in more than 50 years. Meanwhile Vietnam was hit by its worst drought for almost a century and Southern Africa appealed for billions of dollars in aid to feed 40 million people hit by the worst drought in decades.
El Nino also caused the water in many of the oceans to rise. When scientists refer to El Nino, the temperature changes they are looking for are those in the equatorial region of the Pacific, to the west of Ecuador in South America. However, the recent El Nino was so powerful it also encouraged the temperature in other oceans and other parts of the Pacific to increase as well. As the temperatures around the world rose, marine life suffered, particularly the coral reefs. One of the worst hit was Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which reported up to 50 percent coral mortality.
After months of extreme weather around the globe and excess heat in the oceans, the El Nino conditions started to fade. By May, Australian Bureau of Meteorology reported that El Nino had ended. However, other agencies with slightly different criteria for El Nino were much slower to make this announcement, with conditions remaining borderline for months.
Even after El Nino eased, the global weather didn’t calm down. The globe is now about 1.2C above pre-industrial levels and 0.9C above the average for the 1961-1990 period, which the World Meteorological Organisation uses as a baseline, and the heating is not uniform. In parts of far northern Russia, temperatures were 6 to 7C above the long-term average and many other northern parts of Russia, Alaska and northwest Canada were at least 3C above average. As a result of this abnormal heat, the amount of Arctic sea ice remained well below its average throughout the year. March is the month which typically has the maximum extent of sea ice in a year, but in March 2016, this maximum was the lowest on record.
The globe’s extra heat encouraged the severe weather to continue throughout the year. The most deadly weather event of 2016 was Hurricane Matthew, which developed dramatically and unexpectedly, becoming a devastating category five hurricane on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale. Matthew was the closest that a hurricane had ever got to South America. It then tracked north, and smashed into southwest Haiti, causing widespread devastation. The death toll in Haiti varies dramatically depending on the source, but many reports claim that over a thousand people lost their lives in the disaster.
Other devastating floods hit Sri Lanka and China. In Sri Lanka, a tropical cyclone in May was followed by days of torrential rain, which triggered a number of landslides. Entire villages were completely buried by walls of mud, leaving over one hundred people dead. Just two months later, China’s Yangtze River basin was hit by its worst flooding since 1999. Over 300 people lost their lives as the rain poured.
As well as flooding, 2016 also brought its fair share of heatwaves. National temperature records were set in Thailand (44.6C, 112F) and India (51.0C, 124F), but the most notable heatwave was in the Middle East. Mitribah, in Kuwait, reported a temperature of 54.0C (129F). Once this has been verified, this would become the second highest temperature ever reported in the world. Only Greenland Ranch in California has ever reported temperatures higher than this, and that was 56.7C (134F), back in 1913.
The statistics for 2016 are not yet available, but according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2015 the weather, water, climate and geophysical hazards displaced 19.2 million people in 113 different countries. This is a vast number and it shows that the climatic changes are putting a huge strain on the global population.
The United Nations also point out that this is more than double the number of people who were displaced by conflict and violence. Given the current bloodshed that is taking place around the globe, this starkly lays bare the true scale of the problem.
Many parts of the world were hit by weather typical of an El Nino event, but even more powerfully than usual. Flooding and landslides in Ethiopia killed more than 100 people and displaced 150,000 people back in summer. This file photo shows the UKAid’s relief efforts in the country. Photo by DFID/Flickr
