In the 1600s, fishers in Peru saw that every few years around Christmastime, the waters there warmed, and they caught fewer anchovies. They called this 鈥淓l Ni帽o鈥� 鈥� the boy 鈥� after the Christ child.

In the early 20th century, the physicist Gilbert Walker noticed that the prevailing low atmospheric pressure and rainy weather over the western Pacific and dry, high pressure over the eastern Pacific periodically flipped. But it wasn鈥檛 until 1969 that meteorologist Jacob Bjerknes linked the two, showing that swells of warm water in the Pacific Ocean end up wreaking havoc on weather across the globe.

Under normal conditions, the sun鈥檚 heat and Earth鈥檚 spin fuel east-to-west trade winds around the tropics, which blow water into a 鈥渨arm pool鈥� near Indonesia. As this warm pool grows, it builds up energy. 鈥淚t could be a bit like a coiled spring waiting to emerge,鈥� says at the University of Reading, UK.

Every two to seven years, natural chaotic disturbances release that spring. Bursts of westerly winds can blow against and slow the easterly trade winds, allowing swells of warm water to across the Pacific Ocean, raising sea levels along the coasts of Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. These so-called Kelvin waves indicate that El Ni帽o is coming.

A self-reinforcing cycle called the kicks in. The blob of warm water suppresses the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich deep water that normally makes Peru鈥檚 anchovy fishery so rich, further warming the surface water. The warm sea heats the air above it and causes it to expand. The resulting fall in atmospheric pressure slows the trade winds down even more, since winds flow from high to low pressure. This allows still more warm water to slosh back into the eastern Pacific.

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The swathe of warm water stretching across the tropical Pacific releases trillions of joules of heat energy into the atmosphere, raising worldwide temperatures on top of global warming. This is why scientists expect 2027 to be the hottest year on record. But it also drastically alters weather patterns, bringing drought and wildfires to some areas and storms and flooding to others.

Normally, warm air rises over the warm pool, carrying moisture that falls out in thunderstorms, which is why rainforests flourish in places like Indonesia. Denuded of moisture, this warm, dry air then reaches the top of the troposphere and spreads out to the east and west. It descends over the eastern Pacific and the Horn of Africa, fuelling a belt of such air loops around the tropics called the Walker circulation.

During El Ni帽o, however, the warming of the eastern Pacific moves this upward convection eastward, shifting the entire Walker circulation. Now dry, warm air that was sinking over the Horn of Africa and the eastern Pacific is sinking over Indonesia and the Amazon, encouraging drought and wildfires there. Over eastern Africa, warm air is rising, increasing rainfall and the risk of flooding.

Meanwhile, the warming waters also create a stronger temperature contrast between the tropical and northern Pacific, strengthening the jet stream and bringing more storms and wet weather to the southern US. It can bring storms and rain to the UK as well, in certain circumstances.

鈥淚f this deep convection in the atmosphere moves around, it changes things locally, but it also then starts to change the whole circulation of the atmosphere,鈥� says at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why El Ni帽o is a big deal, not just some local process.鈥�

A record El Ni帽o climate phase will unleash unprecedented heat and extreme weather, and the UK food system is vulnerable, climate minister Katie White told New 精东传媒.

At the same time, she pushed back against 鈥減anic and fear鈥� after environment minister Angela Eagle told Britons they should 鈥渟tore a bit of food that can keep you going for a while鈥� in case of El Ni帽o storms and flooding.

鈥淟ook, am I going out and buying loads of extra beans? I鈥檝e always got a few cans of beans, but that鈥檚 mainly so I鈥檓 ready for when I鈥檝e not had a chance to go to the shop,鈥� said White. 鈥淪o I鈥檓 not going out and doing that.鈥�

The UK Met Office, the national weather service, has that the UK is likely to face an unusually warm, wet and stormy autumn and winter due to El Ni帽o, which occurs every two to seven years. While late winter in the UK has often been cold and dry during El Ni帽o, the current event is so strong that it could remain warm and rainy into spring.

If fields become too muddy, tractors may not be able to sow crops like winter wheat, as happened in the 2023-24 El Ni帽o, or the plants could fail to sprout. Continued wet weather could undermine spring barley. Farmers could be forced to spend more on livestock feed and housing, raising meat and dairy prices as well.

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Closer to the tropics, crops like rice could fail due to heat, drought and weakened monsoons. A UK government last week warned that El Ni帽o could increase UK prices for imported foods such as rice, cocoa and coffee.聽This comes after heatwaves and drought linked to global warming reduced crop yields in the northern hemisphere this summer, resulting in the worst-ever wheat, barley, rape and oat harvest in the UK. 聽

鈥淲e will have a wetter start to this winter鈥� On the back of a very dry summer, that is difficult,鈥� said White. 鈥淭he food system is vulnerable.鈥�

Large countries including China, Brazil and Germany have been building up stores of key foods like wheat, rice, corn and sugar. But the UK doesn鈥檛 keep substantial public food reserves.

White argued that the UK would be better off helping local farms and groceries to become more resilient to climate shocks. A task force she established that includes military experts and scientists will meet in October to scrutinise readiness for climate security threats, including to food.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we need to be in a position of grain stores, but I do think we do need to be looking at where the vulnerabilities are in the food system and how we support local production in the most sustainable way,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 going to be working with farmers and also on local supply chains.鈥�

Farmers will probably have to plant more weather-resistant varieties or different crops entirely, according to at the University of Oxford. The UK also needs to reduce its reliance on imports for 40 per cent of its food. But 鈥済rain storage is definitely part of the answer鈥� as well, she says.

El Ni帽o flooding could also threaten housing and infrastructure, and these risks will continue as climate change makes most of the world warmer and wetter. The UK should not only build anti-flood engineering works such as the Thames Barrier, but also restore ecosystems like wetlands to absorb excess water, said White. Extreme heat, which killed at least 35,000 people in Europe this year, is likely to bake the continent again next summer.

The long-term solution is for the UK and other countries to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, she said, a goal that right-wing parties have been increasingly attacking in the UK, the European Union and the US.

Yet the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which White is a part of, is reportedly set to the Jackdaw gas field off Scotland, and may consent to the Rosebank oil field as well. These would result in at least 275 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetime, equivalent to about three-quarters of the UK鈥檚 current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

White said she couldn鈥檛 comment as the approvals are up to energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, but noted that 鈥渙il and gas is part of our mix going forward鈥�.

She argued that the growth of renewable energy, which now generates more than half of UK electricity, would reduce fossil fuel emissions over time, pointing out that the UK has almost as many public electric vehicle chargers as petrol pumps. Her department also just 拢30 million of funding for 1000 community-owned solar, hydro and wind projects.

This month, the UN the world will soon fail the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5掳C above pre-industrial levels and will have to rely on CO2 removal 鈥� ranging from tree planting to carbon-sucking machines 鈥� to bring temperatures back down in the future. The UK鈥檚 Advanced Research and Invention Agency is funding 拢57 million of research into geoengineering techniques like spreading sun-blocking particles in the atmosphere.

White said the UK has no plans to deploy geoengineering and she is concentrating on reducing climate impacts in the near term.

鈥淢y focus as climate minister is鈥� adaptation and resilience because I know that next summer is likely to be very, very hot,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut also for this winter, how do we accelerate electrification? Because that is the best way to bring people鈥檚 bills down.鈥�

Picture the world 100 or 200 years from now. What are you imagining? Hotter temperatures, melting glaciers or alpine places without snow? With heatwaves happening across Europe this summer, it’s not that hard to visualise.

Now picture Europe in a deep freeze where temperatures hit -20掳C in London. Both of these scenarios might be the future we’re heading for, thanks to climate change. And there’s an even more worrying indicator: while almost the entire planet has been warming, there’s one patch in the North Atlantic Ocean just south of Greenland where temperatures have been falling.

精东传媒s call it the “cold blob”, and some think it could be a warning that one of Earth’s most important climate systems is beginning to change and may soon hit a tipping point where climate change no longer happens gradually. If this system flips, it could have devastating consequences that change all of our lives as we know them.

Global warming has accelerated and is now happening twice as fast as in previous decades, meaning major climate catastrophes could happen sooner than expected.

Earth was warming by about 0.18掳C per decade prior to 2013-14. Since then, it has been heating up by about 0.36掳C per decade, according to an analysis by at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and US statistician Grant Foster.

If warming continues at this rate, humanity could breach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5掳C in 2028, even sooner than other research has projected.

鈥淓very tenth of a degree matters and makes the impact of global warming worse in terms of extreme weather events, in terms of ecosystem impacts, also the risk of crossing tipping points,鈥� says Rahmstorf. 鈥淭he world, apart from the US, is trying to halt global warming, reduce it, and that鈥檚 why the fact that it鈥檚 now actually doing the opposite, accelerating, is of great concern.鈥�

After a string of record-hot years, climate scientists began widely debating in 2023 whether global warming is speeding up. But natural fluctuations, such as the El Ni帽o climate phase, which caused additional warming in 2023 and 2024, made it difficult to tell if the faster rise in temperatures was due to climate change or just random weather.

Rahmstorf and Foster鈥檚 study is the first to find a statistically significant acceleration due to climate change, making that attribution with 98 per cent confidence.

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The team analysed five different datasets of global temperature, some of which show a higher number. According to the analysis of the dataset from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, global warming could reach 1.5掳C above the preindustrial period this year, based on a 20-year average.

Warm-water coral reefs are starting to collapse, and breaching 1.5掳C risks crossing other tipping points like irreversible melting of Greenland and west Antarctica and the dieback of the Amazon rainforest.

Many scientists think the acceleration in global heating was caused mainly by a crackdown in 2020 on sulphur dioxide in shipping emissions. While that substance is harmful to human health, it also formed a haze of aerosols that was blocking sunlight and cooling the planet.

Now that this sunlight has been unblocked, the warming rate may slow down, but it鈥檚 hard to say for sure, says Rahmstorf. The transition away from fossil fuels will continue to diminish air pollution that is masking warming.

鈥淭here will be further aerosol reductions, [but] probably not as rapid as those shipping emissions were reduced,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 quite possible that the warming rate will be lower in the next decade.鈥�

In addition to El Ni帽o, the authors estimated the effects of volcanic eruptions, which also create sun-blocking haze, and increased solar radiation during cycles of high sunspots. After excluding these effects, they fitted two types of curve to global temperatures, both of which showed an acceleration in warming, although at different times.

It鈥檚 unlikely, however, that the researchers were able to completely remove the temperature effects of El Ni帽o, volcanoes and sunspots, according to at Berkeley Earth in California. That means they could be slightly overestimating how much global warming has sped up. But the study does offer convincing proof it has quickened, he says.

鈥淭he broader takeaway is that we have strong evidence for acceleration even if we don鈥檛 know precisely how much the rate of warming has increased as of yet,鈥� Hausfather says. 鈥淲e will need to wait a few more years to get more data.鈥�