Forecasts for 2023: When La Nia ends, the ocean will be warmer, as well as the Southwest, and hurricane activity will pick up
Next year is expected to mark 10 consecutive years with global average temperatures at least 1 degree Celsius higher than the average during the preindustrial period. The average Earth temperature is predicted to be between 1.08 and 1.32 degrees Celsius higher than before, when humans started burning fossil fuels more ferociously.
Current forecasts suggest that La Nia will be one of the longest on record when it ends early in 2023. The Pacific will warm up again. Without the cooling effect of La Nia, the hottest year on record will be in 2023, even if it becomes hot enough for an El Nio to develop.
One consequence of La Niña is that it helps keep a lid on global temperatures. Despite the recent heat waves and fires, we have been spared the worst. This La Nia will end and eventually transition into El Nio, which will cause the waters of the equatorial Pacific to become much warmer. When it happens, the extreme weather that has raged across our planet in recent times will be meaningless.
What will this mean? It is not a surprise to see the Death Valley’s record temperature of 54.4C (129.9F) shattered. This could well happen somewhere in the Middle East or South Asia, where temperatures could climb above 55°C. The heat could exceed the blistering 40°C mark again in the UK, and for the first time, top 50°C in parts of Europe.
One of the worst-affected regions will be the Southwest United States. The longest dry spell in at least 1,200 years has persisted for more than two decades and reduced the level of Lake Mead on the Colorado River so much that power generation capacity at the Hoover Dam has plummeted. If the weather stays like it is, the Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell will stop generating power in 2023. The Hoover Dam could follow suit in 2024. Millions of people in seven states receive water and power from these lakes and dams. The collapse of this supply would cause disaster for the region’s population and industry.
Hurricane activity is expected to pick up as La Nia ends, because it restricts the development of hurricanes in the Atlantic. The higher global temperatures expected in 2023 could see extreme heating of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico surface waters. Should super-hurricanes and storm surge strike land, this will favor the formation and persistence of those powerful storms. Direct hits, rather than a glancing blow, are rare—the closest in recent decades being Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which made landfall immediately south of Miami, obliterating more than 60,000 homes and damaging 125,000 more. If a city gets in the way of a superstorm it will be catastrophic, since Hurricanes today are both more powerful and wet.
A degree hotter might not seem like much, especially as much of the US emerges from a frigid winter storm. But that kind of change on a global scale has already triggered catastrophic climate effects. Some regions have been hit much harder by climate change than others, that’s an average for the entire planet.
“This year we have faced several dramatic weather disasters which claimed far too many lives and livelihoods and undermined health, food, energy and water security and infrastructure,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement today. There were major economic losses and human casualties caused by the floods in Pakistan. There have been record breaking heatwaves in China, Europe and North America. The long-lasting drought in the Horn of Africa threatens a humanitarian catastophe.”