El Niño, a climate pattern where warm waters in the eastern Pacific fuel hotter weather, is finally beginning to wane after bringing a long stretch of record heat and heavy precipitation across the world since last summer.
A new study, published in Science Advances by researchers at the University at Albany and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in China, has found that these events, which typically occur once every few years, might become even stronger due to melting Arctic sea ice.
Using a combination of climate model simulations and observational data, the researchers found that the current interaction of Arctic sea ice with the atmosphere reduces the strength of El Niño events by up to 17 percent, compared to when the interaction is removed.
The amount of sea ice that survives the Arctic summer has declined 12.2 percent per decade since the late 1970s and projections show the region could experience its first ice-free summer by 2040.
“Climate models are already projecting a strengthened El Niño in the upcoming decades due to global warming. Arctic sea ice is also projected to decline rapidly in the upcoming decades, said Aiguo Dai, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences and study co-author.