Amped El Niños

Research finds that the El Niño ocean warming episodes across the tropical Pacific will become more frequent as the Arctic becomes more ice-free. Writing in Nature Communications, Jiping Liu of the University of Albany said that as the ice loss continues in the Arctic to the point that it is ice-free in summer, strong El Niño events will increase by more than a third. Arctic sea ice cover is now about 50% less in summer than a century ago. The predicted increase in strong El Niños would mean even stronger climate impacts later this century, Liu said.