WASHINGTON - From starving cattle in parched El Salvador to a "terrifying" threat to the world's coral reefs, this year's exceptionally strong El Niño is being felt across the globe.
Here is how it is playing out across AFP's network.
- Threats to coral reefs and forests -
This year's El Niño adds "a terrifying level of additional risk" for the world's coral reefs, David Obura, chair of the UN's expert nature panel, told AFP.
Corals are highly sensitive to heat, and climate change is making bleaching events more frequent and intense.
Obura led a major reassessment of coral health, published in Nature, that found reef-building species had deteriorated sharply since the last global census in 2008.
Forests are also at risk. Global deforestation slowed last year, according to the independent Forest Declaration Assessment, but the gains are unlikely to last as conditions worsen in Central Africa and El Niño raises fire risks across the tropics.
- Death stalks an El Salvador livestock market -
Drought fueled by El Niño is wreaking havoc across Central America's Dry Corridor, which stretches from Mexico to Panama.
At a livestock market in Sensuntepeque, El Salvador, AFP found starving cows with protruding ribs.
"Imagine how thin this little animal is! Why? Because of a lack of grass," said Antonio Aguilar, a 54-year-old rancher, pointing to a cow reduced to skin and bones.
The El Niño, expected to peak by year's end, is unfolding amid accelerating human-caused warming, which amplifies its effects. A warmer atmosphere dries out soil, deepening drought, and holds more moisture, making rains more extreme.
- Global poverty risks -
UN development chief Alexander De Croo told AFP that El Niño, combined with surging energy costs and higher interest rates, could push millions into poverty as the vulnerable are hit by crisis after crisis.
He urged private investors to recognise both the "economic cost" of climate change and the "business case" for tackling it.
Sri Lanka's central bank warned that El Niño could undermine the island's fragile recovery from its worst economic crisis in decades, with torrential rains forecast through December and prolonged drought early next year.
- What scientists say -
How this El Niño ranks depends on how it is measured, and agencies' differing methods make direct comparisons difficult.
Britain's Met Office calls it "unprecedented" and Japan's weather agency calls it the strongest ever observed, but US forecasters have not declared a record -- yet.
"By any measure, we are looking at a very strong El Niño," climate scientist Emily Becker of the University of Miami told AFP. She added that only once it is over will scientists know "where it fits in the context of history."
Because climate change is warming oceans everywhere, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) now measures how warm or cool the east-central Pacific is compared with the rest of the tropical ocean. That difference is what drives global weather impacts.
- By the numbers -
4.3C: How much hotter than normal August was in El Salvador, according to an AFP analysis of Copernicus satellite, ground-station and modelled data. Many less well-equipped nations do not publish detailed climate data of their own.
1982: The strongest El Niño year in NOAA's dataset. The agency says the current event will likely surpass it.
44%: The share of reef-building coral species threatened with extinction in the latest global assessment. Since then, the fourth global bleaching event and this year's El Niño have put corals in even greater jeopardy.
- How do a few degrees of warming in the Pacific exert so much influence? -
Under NOAA's updated index, a 2.5C anomaly in a key Pacific region relative to the rest of the tropical ocean, sustained over three months, would make for the most intense El Niño on record.
That might not sound like much, but the El Niño- Southern Oscillation is the leading natural driver of year-to-year climate variability.
Shifts in where the ocean releases heat into the atmosphere ripple across global weather, leaving some regions cooler and wetter and others hotter and drier. These effects are known as "teleconnections."
But while El Niños, and their opposite number La Niñas, when the equatorial Pacific is colder than normal, load the dice toward certain outcomes, they do not guarantee them.
- by Issam Ahmed (AFP)