Monday May 22, 2023
San Francisco Chronicle —
Officials raised the alarm last week for a near guarantee that the world will face its hottest year on record within the next five years.
A double whammy of human-induced climate change and the return of El Niño are expected “to push global temperatures into uncharted territory,” said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a news release.
“There’s really high confidence that we will get an El Niño event,” said John O’Brien, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “I think what we don’t know right now is what kind of El Niño we’re going to get.”
The El Niño events of 1982-83 and 1997-98 resulted in winters with record-breaking snow and rain in California. This year the state has already seen flooding due to historic precipitation, in places like Pajaro (Monterey County) and Corcoran (Kings County). These and other communities are still recovering, with the potential for even more wet weather down the road.