El Niño could hit at the end of 2020, physicists warn

The team is currently expanding the algorithm in order to be able to forecast the strength and length of the weather phenomenon in the future.

By ILANIT CHERNICK
An illustrative image of a chart depicting abnormal Pacific ocean surface temperatures observed during the El Nino (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
An illustrative image of a chart depicting abnormal Pacific ocean surface temperatures observed during the El Nino
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Physicists have warned that there is an 80% probability of another El Niño cycle, which could occur in the Pacific region at the end of 2020.
This is according to German and Israeli researchers from Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Bar-Ilan University (BIU).
According to a statement from BIU, the prediction method the researchers developed is based on an algorithm that relies on a network analysis of air temperatures in the Pacific region, and although commonly used models do not currently show any signs of an upcoming storm, the researchers predict have predicted El Niño to occur by the end of 2020.
“This algorithm correctly predicted the last two El Niño events (in 2014 and 2018) more than a year in advance,” BIU stressed.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Prof. Shlomo Havlin, an Israel Prize-winning physicist from BIU, who was involved in developing the algorithm, explained that “El Niño affects the global climate and disrupts normal weather patterns, which as a result can lead to intense storms in some places and droughts in others.  
“This includes drought in parts of Africa, South America, Australia and Indonesia, empty fishing nets and torrential rainfall in Peru, more rainfall in California, hurricanes in the Atlantic, and monsoon in India,” he said. “El Niño can occur at irregular intervals around Christmas [with] a cycle lasting for about a year.”
Asked how this could affect weather patterns in Israel, Havlin said that “El Niño influences the rainfall patterns during our winter,” adding that there it could cause “above average rainfall/streamflow in northern Israel during.”
Explaining how the algorithm works, Havlin said that “this novel climate network approach is very promising for improving El Niño prediction.
“Instead of analyzing the temperatures in a local place in the Pacific we analyze the changes in the global climate network,” he said.
JLU physicist Armin Bunde, who initiated the development of the algorithm together with his former PhD student Josef Ludescher, said in a statement that "conventional methods are unable to make a reliable El Niño forecast more than six months in advance.
“With our method, we have roughly doubled the previous warning time," Bunde stressed.
Ludescher, who is now at PIK, emphasized that they also had predicted the absence of another El Niño in 2019 at the end of last year. Only since July have official forecasts agreed with ours."
The team is currently expanding the algorithm in order to be able to forecast the strength and length of the weather phenomenon in the future.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, PIK director emeritus, highlighted that this combination of measured data and mathematics “gives us unique insights - and we make these available to the people affected.”
He pointed out that the prediction method does not offer one 100% certainty. “the probability of 'El Niño' in 2020 is around 80%. But that's pretty significant.”
According to BIU, the researchers used “a network of atmospheric temperature data in the tropical Pacific consisting of 14 grid points in the equatorial ‘El Niño’ core area, and 193 points in the Pacific outside this core area.
“The physicists had discovered that already in the year before the eruption of an ‘El Niño,’ the teleconnection effect between the air temperatures inside and outside of the core area becomes considerably stronger,” it said. “In particular, they used this effect to optimize their prediction algorithm.”
Havlin told the Post that among other things, such long-term forecasts are “relevant, for example in planning agriculture” and can assist farmers in preparing themselves and adjusting their sowing accordingly.
The prediction method was first published in 2013 in an article in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
Reliable data from the period between the beginning of 1950 and the end of 2011 was available to the researchers for their investigations.
“The period between 1950 and 1980 served as a learning phase for determining the alarm thresholds. With the help of this algorithm, the ‘El Nino’ events could then be predicted and compared with actual events,” the university said. “In 80% of the cases, the alarm was correct and the "El Niño" event could be accurately predicted the year before.”


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