Climate Change Linked to Stronger El Niño Events

A new study published in the journal Science indicates that El Niño events have become significantly more intense over the past 40 years, a change researchers attribute to human-caused climate change. The research, led by scientists at the University of Michigan, used chemical analysis of ancient and modern corals from the Galápagos Islands to reconstruct sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific over the last millennium.

The analysis revealed that variability in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle has increased by 36.5 percent compared to the preindustrial period. This intensification has been driven largely by stronger El Niño events, which are characterized by unusual warming of ocean waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. The findings suggest a clear link between rising global temperatures and the amplification of these powerful climate patterns.

"We don't see a time in the past where El Niños have been as strong as today, and we show that the strength of El Niño changes in parallel with the warming of global temperature," said Julia Cole, a lead author of the study and a professor at the University of Michigan. The research team collected core...