The $30 billion question : Will El Niño deliver its worst yet?

NASA's satellite data has revealed a massive swell of warm water in the Pacific Ocean, an ominous sign that a Super El Niño may be brewing. The phenomenon, which has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years, has the potential to wreak havoc on global temperatures, with experts predicting a 3°C temperature spike this summer.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle has been a recurring climate phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, with the current signs pointing to this year being one of the strongest El Niño patterns ever recorded.

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The World Meteorological Organisation has warned that we can expect above-normal temperatures in nearly all parts of the globe, with the strongest heat signals forecast across southern and western North America, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, North Africa, and much of Asia.

Northern parts of Asia may also be warmer than usual, although the forecast there is less certain. Warmer-than-normal conditions are also expected across many areas in the Southern Hemisphere , with Northern South America likely to see the strongest warming.

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According to NASA, the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, which was launched in 2020, measures and maps water height for the entire ocean every 10 days, down to fractions of an inch. In the case of El Niño, the satellite tracks what are called warm Kelvin waves, which typically form after brief periods when winds over the far western equatorial Pacific Ocean moving from east to west change direction.

The wave that forms then travels east for several weeks, eventually reaching South America and causing water off the coast to heat up and rise.. An El Niño develops as multiple Kelvin waves appear over the course of several months, and the warm water accumulates off the shores of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, according to NASA.

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While this year's event started a bit later than the big El Niños of 2015 and 1997, it's beginning to catch up, said Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We'll see how big it gets.

When El Niño does arrive, we can expect above-normal temperatures in nearly all parts of the globe. the strongest heat signals are forecast across southern and western North America, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, North Africa, and much of Asia .