{"id":6445,"date":"2023-07-17T05:26:40","date_gmt":"2023-07-16T17:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=6445"},"modified":"2023-07-17T05:26:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T17:26:40","slug":"how-el-nino-climate-change-and-warming-oceans-could-supercharge-the-worlds-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=6445","title":{"rendered":"How El Ni\u00f1o, climate change and warming oceans could supercharge the world&#8217;s weather"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the calendar year ticked over to 2023, residents of Western\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/482179\/wa-floods-rebuild-may-take-months-as-falling-kimberley-water-levels-reveal-enormous-damage\">Australia&#8217;s Kimberley region<\/a>\u00a0were fleeing to higher ground as heavy downpours brought water levels to astonishing heights.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, half a world away, sinkholes swallowed cars and floodwaters engulfed California streets, with a parade of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/437673\/massive-rivers-in-the-sky-account-for-nz-s-costliest-floods\">atmospheric rivers<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; long regions in the atmosphere that transport water vapour and create extreme rainfall &#8211; drenching the state until March.<\/p>\n<p>These major weather events marked the start of a collection of natural disasters and other extreme weather events, which have played out across the globe so far this year.<\/p>\n<p>Many have reached levels of intensity severe enough to cause even climate scientists, who have been witnessing and projecting events of this kind for decades, to pause.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s been a collective feeling of, &#8216;Woah, that&#8217;s insane&#8217; from myself and quite a few of my colleagues this year,&#8221; Monash University associate professor Ailie Gallant said.<\/p>\n<p>Among the myriad of events was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/486263\/the-deadly-cyclone-that-lasted-more-than-a-month\">Tropical Cyclone Freddy<\/a>, which traversed the entire Indian Ocean and went on to become one of the most energetic and long-lasting cyclones in history, devastating Southern Africa.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/on-the-inside\/448840\/rising-seas-and-melting-glaciers-changes-now-irreversible-but-we-have-to-act-to-slow-them-down\">sea ice levels<\/a>\u00a0in the Antarctic plunged to record lows &#8211; with the deficit continuing to grow since then, now more than 2.5 million square kilometres below average.<\/p>\n<p>In April and May, heatwaves of extreme magnitude shattered records across Spain, Portugal and Morocco, as well as South and South-East Asia.<\/p>\n<p>And right now, Canada is enduring one of its worst\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/491554\/raging-canada-wildfires-threaten-critical-infrastructure-force-evacuations\">wildfire seasons<\/a>\u00a0on record by area burned.<\/p>\n<p>The fires have destroyed hundreds of homes and caused smoke to smother the New York City skyline.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the calendar year ticked over to 2023, residents of Western\u00a0Australia&#8217;s Kimberley region\u00a0were fleeing to higher ground as heavy downpours brought water levels to astonishing heights. Meanwhile, half a world away, sinkholes swallowed cars and floodwaters engulfed California streets, with a parade of\u00a0atmospheric rivers\u00a0&#8211; long regions in the atmosphere that transport water vapour and create [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6447,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6445\/revisions\/6447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}