Last month, the United Nations warned that this year’s El Niño, a naturally occurring climate pattern characterized by unusually warm ocean surface temperatures throughout the Pacific, would be particularly extreme.
“The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is,” the World Metereological Organization cautioned at the time. “El Niño conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world.”
Indeed, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed that there was a rising chance of a “very strong” El Niño, triggering drastic temperature swings and more frequent extreme weather events, from severe storms to major flooding. Meanwhile, human-driven climate change will only amplify these effects, making this summer particularly precarious.
But scientists say we’re not entirely helpless. According to a new study published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday by researchers at UC San Diego, weather-altering interventions — including the radical proposition of dimming the Sun — could tamp down El Niño’s impacts.
