At least 100 elephants have died in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park due to drought caused by climate change and El Nino, a natural weather phenomenon that warms parts of the Pacific. Conservation groups are urging governments to take action to protect vulnerable species and ecosystems, as El Nino is making an already dire situation worse. Tinashe Farawo, spokesman for the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, said "We must act now to protect our wildlife and ecosystems."
Posts tagged as “El Niño”
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced that 2023 is likely to be the hottest year on record, with global temperatures reaching 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. This is just one-tenth of a degree under the Paris climate accord's target limit for the end of the century. The WMO report warns of increasing floods, wildfires, glacier melt, and heat waves, and the onset of El Nino could tip the average temperature next year over the 1.5-degree (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold. World leaders must take immediate action to reduce emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change to meet the Paris climate accord's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
This weekend, the Southwest region of the United States is expected to experience extreme temperatures, with some areas reaching up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. This heat wave is the latest in a series of extreme weather events linked to climate change, caused by El Niño and the world's hottest period in the last 125,000 years. Governments and citizens must take action to reduce emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change in order to address the urgent need to combat climate change.
This week, nearly 100 million people in the United States will be affected by a record-breaking heat wave caused by the return of El Niño. Global average temperatures have set new records or tied existing ones for four days in a row, beginning July 3, indicating that the heat wave is not only affecting the United States, but the entire world. The National Weather Service has issued warnings for those in the affected areas to take precautions to stay safe in the heat.
This report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals that there is a two-out-of-three chance that the world will temporarily reach the internationally accepted global temperature threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change within the next five years. This threshold was set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and is likely to be surpassed due to a combination of human-caused warming and a natural El Nino climate pattern. The WMO has urged countries to take action to reduce their emissions and to prepare for the impacts of climate change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has announced that La Niña, a weather pattern that increases hurricane activity and worsens western drought, has officially ended, with neutral conditions now in place. This is the first time since September 2020 that neutral conditions have been in place, and they are expected to continue through early summer in the Northern Hemisphere. El Niño is also expected to increase the chance for early spring conditions across the southern U.S.