“What do you think about the El Nino phenomenon?
“Umm … it’s a blip. I think basically Latin music is on its way out.”
Bridget Jones does not get the TV job she’s interviewing for in the 2001 film. But El Nino is back now, bringing extreme weather and trouble for energy systems around the globe.
From 2020 to 2022, the world was in La Nina conditions. Warm surface waters in the tropical Pacific moved west, allowing cold water to well up from deeper levels along the western coast of South America. This brings generally cooler weather, though with global warming, last year was still the fifth hottest on record.
On Thursday, the US Climate Prediction Centre officially concluded that the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has flipped into its opposite, warmer phase. The eastern Pacific is now unusually hot, and the prevailing east-to-west trade winds are blowing the other way….
