Computer Simulation Warns of a Permanent El Nino by 2050

Conditions like El Nino might prevail almost permanently if global warming gets bad enough, making climate disruptions such as droughts or excessive winter rain essentially the norm, a computer study suggests. That might happen around the year 2050 if nothing is done to control emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, researcher Mojib Latif of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, writes in today’s issue of the journal Nature.

El Nino is a natural phenomenon that involves a surface warming of the eastern and central Pacific Ocean around the equator every three to four years, on average. It can disrupt climate around the world, producing extra rain in the southeastern United States and in Peru during the winter, for example, while causing drought in the western Pacific. The computer simulation suggests that unrestrained global warming could set up the same pattern permanently in ocean surface temperatures.

--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II