So massive that it recently surpassed the 12m concurrent users mark. In State of the Climate 2015, Blunden, J., and D.Arndt, Eds.Steam's massive. In State of the Climate 2015, Chapter 4: The Tropics. (2015) Atmospheric composition changes due to the extreme 2015 Indonesian fire season triggered by El Niño. More information about the event in 2016 is available in our ENSO blog. The 2015 El Niño continued through winter and spring of 2016. *This article is based on analysis and details of E Niño published in the 2015 State of the Climate report, which covers climate during the calendar year. More than 8 million people required food aid as a result of lost crops. In the northeastern highlands, it was as little as 30%. In 2015, northern, central, and southeastern Ethiopian highlands received 50%–90% of their normal rainfall. When seasonal agricultural burning got underway, the fires spread into surrounding forests, causing an environmental and public health emergency.įew places have as long and devastating a history with drought and famine as Ethiopia, and El Niño tends to raise the likelihood for failed rainy seasons and drought. The overactive fire season was attributed to El Niño-linked drought, which made degraded forests surrounding agricultural lands very flammable. Locations where the satellite detected active fire are outlined in red. Among the major contributors in 2015 were rampant forest fires in Indonesia.Ī pall of brownish-gray smoke obscured the island of Borneo in this satellite image from October 19, 2015. The previous largest annual jump in carbon dioxide that scientists observed at Mauna Loa (2.93 ppm) was in 1998 during another strong El Niño.Įl Niño often leads to an expansion of global drought area (less plant growth and carbon dioxide uptake), an increase in tropical forest fires (release of stored carbon from wood and leaves), and other landscape changes that boost atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The global average carbon dioxide concentration at Mauna Loa Observatory made the biggest 1-year jump of the modern record: 3.1 parts per million. This wasn’t just a new record for warmth, it was also the largest margin by which one year has beaten another since 1998 (which was also an El Niño year!).īiggest one-year jump in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at Mauna Loa The global average surface temperature in 2015 came in first in the race for warmest year on record, beating out the previous record-set in 2014-by 0.13°–0.18☌, depending on the datas et. The return period for rainfall so low is estimated to be 1 in 500 years. Rainfall deficits were the largest on record dating back to 1928. Sixty-five percent of the island’s farmers went out of business. In Antigua, the 1-billion-gallon reservoir behind the Potworks Dam went dry. Lucia and in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. Emergency water rationing occurred in St. Ten island nations experienced severe drought. Temperatures were high and rainfall was low across the entire Caribbean in 2015. Satellite image of record-breaking trio of Pacific hurricanes, Kilo, Ignacio, and Jimena on August 31, 2015. But the atmosphere didn’t fully start cooperating until March 2015, when NOAA forecasters declared El Niño officially underway.īy December 2015*, however, disruptions in temperature, rainfall, and surface air pressure across the tropical Pacific were on par with two of the strongest El Niños in the historical record: 19. Monthly sea surface temperatures in a key ENSO-monitoring region hit the El Niño threshold-0.5☌ above average-in October 2014 and remained elevated through winter. The warm up for the 2015 El Niño event actually began in 2014. A major hotspot of tropical rainfall and convection (rising air) develops over the warm waters. Surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific warm up. During El Niño, the prevailing winds near the equator in the Pacific relax. A Pacific pattern with a global echoĮl Niño is the warm phase of a natural climate pattern called “ ENSO,” which is short for El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Map by NOAA, based on OISST data from NCEI. A dark orange swath through the tropical Pacific Ocean in image center shows the year-long influence of El Niño. Worldwide sea surface temperatures in 2015 compared to the 1981-2010 average.
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