“El Niño conditions have developed in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years, setting the stage for a likely surge in global temperatures and disruptive weather and climate patterns,” World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.

According to the organization's forecasts, there is a 90% chance that the El Niño event will continue through the second half of 2023 as it is expected to be of moderate strength.

This weather event will affect global temperatures which manifest itself a year after its development, thus it will most likely be visible in 2024.

As WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas stated, early warnings and anticipatory action of extreme weather events associated with this major climate phenomenon are critical to saving lives and livelihoods.

El Nino weather patterns have been related to an increase in the transmission of viral infections such as dengue, Zika, and chikungunya.

The World Health Organization's director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned in June this year that climate change is increasing mosquito breeding, and dengue fever incidence has been increasing substantially in recent decades, notably in the Americas.

El Niño, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Oceans, has been connected to a number of extreme weather events ranging from tropical cyclones to heavy rainfall to severe droughts.

The phenomenon, which happens in the context of a climate change by human activity, occurs on average every two to seven years, with episodes lasting nine to twelve months. It is a natural climate trend associated with rising ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. 

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the average world temperature in 2022 was about 1.15 degrees Celsius higher than the 1850-1900 average due to the cooling triple-dip La Niña.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) research, released in May, also stated that there is a 66% chance that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be hotter than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.

 “The onset of El Niño will greatly increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records and triggering more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the ocean,” said Prof. Taalas.

According to the World Meteorological Organization's State of the Global Climate reports, 2016 was the warmest year on record due to a "double whammy" of a very severe El Niño phenomenon and human-induced warming from greenhouse emissions.

But WMO Director of Climate Services Prof. Chris Hewitt says, it is yet another wake up call, or an early warning, that the world is not yet going in the right direction to limit the warming to within the targets set in Paris in 2015 designed to substantially reduce the impacts of climate change.

“This is not to say that in the next five years we would exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement because that agreement refers to long-term warming over many years,” he said.