MeteoSwiss classifies
Will El Niño bring us the heat hammer in summer?
Rising temperatures due to the weather phenomenon El Niño: The World Weather Organization (WMO) warns of this. The Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology explains what threatens us in summer.
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The signs of El Niño are increasing. Are we now threatened by the hammer heat in summer?
Is Switzerland threatened with a heat hell in summer in the coming years? The World Weather Organization (WMO) warns of rising temperatures in the coming years. The reason: a weather phenomenon that bears the name El Niño. This means a warm phase over the Pacific. It occurs about every two to ten years.
The climate expert Kevin Trenberth from the University of Auckland expects global temperature records in 2024 – because El Niño releases part of the ocean heat into the atmosphere.
“El Niño is a regular phenomenon”
However, the Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology Meteoschweiz leaves the heat forecast cold. “The probability that El Niño will remain in a neutral state until mid-year is higher than the probability that an El Niño event will develop by mid-2023,” says Stephan Bader from the Climate Department at Blick. In concrete terms, this means that there is a high probability that we will not be faced with a heat hammer this summer.
In Switzerland, the weather phenomenon usually has no effect. “El Niño has always been a more or less regularly occurring phenomenon,” continues Stephan Bader. The opposite development to El Niño is called La Niña. La Niña is thought to be a cold phase, when currents carry solar heating to deep waters of the western Pacific, where it is stored. Between both extremes one speaks of a neutral phase.
Climate change does not affect El Niño
There is a scientific debate about how great the influence of El Niño and La Niña on Europe – and thus Switzerland – actually is. The effects are weakened – if at all – and are superimposed by another weather phenomenon, the so-called North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).
The NAO describes the pressure fluctuations in the North Atlantic atmosphere. It repeatedly oscillates back and forth between weak and strong north-south pressure gradients and thus influences where and how much it rains or snows in Europe. El Niño will only be felt in Europe if the NAO state is neutral.
According to the German Weather Service (DWD), more precipitation can be expected in winter, especially along the French Alps and the Jura to southwest Germany. Larger areas are not affected.
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Climate change does not appear to affect the El Niño phenomenon. “A noticeable change in the frequency of occurrence has not been observed in recent decades, despite ongoing global warming,” says Bader.