GoKawiil1,000-year coral record links rising El Niño intensity to human-driven warming
Palaeoclimatologist Julia Cole and colleagues reconstructed a millennium of sea surface temperatures using Galápagos coral skeletons, published in Science. They found that strong El Niño events have occurred more often over the past century, since industrial-era greenhouse gas emissions began, than in the thousand years before it.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
El Niño events raise global average temperatures temporarily and reshape regional weather, affecting agriculture, fisheries and disaster risk such as wildfires. If climate models are right that intense El Niños will keep becoming more frequent, communities and governments will need to plan for more frequent climate shocks layered on top of long-term warming.
- Coral-based reconstructions show strong El Niños are more frequent now than in the pre-industrial millennium.
- Researchers link the trend to human-caused climate change rather than natural variability.
- Future projections remain uncertain because ocean-atmosphere interactions driving El Niño are complex.
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Published there as: “Why are El Niños getting stronger? 1000-year-coral record points to climate change”
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