There's a very strong El Niño happening right now, as you may have heard. Basically that means that the eastern Pacific Ocean is far warmer than it should be.
That abnormally warm part of the Pacific can transform weather around the globe, causing drought in Central America, rain in the southwestern US, and other effects all over the world.
But as powerful as this El Niño is, it's not yet "the strongest in recorded history" — despite plenty of stories that have said otherwise — according to Columbia University's Anthony Barnston, the chief forecaster for the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.
Barnston, a former climate prediction researcher for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Tech Insider in an email that it was too early to say how this El Niño will pan out out. It's "likely to be among the top 3 since 1950," he wrote, "but not likely the top one."
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Further, Barnston also told TI that it's way too early to be certain that this will be followed by a strong La Niña, another prediction that's been making the rounds. La Niña is when an abnormally cool Pacific patch creates other kinds of weather havoc, including droughts and hurricanes. But he says the idea that we need to prepare for a "killer La Niña" made him "laugh loudly."
So what's happening and why is this such a big deal?
El Niño, as NASA simply defines it, is an "unusually warm pool of water off the west coast of South America" that is "linked with complex, large-scale interactions between the atmosphere and ocean in the Pacific."
Right now there is a very strong El Niño event happening, one that's a major factor in making this the hottest year in history, worsening a global coral bleaching event, contributing to massive forest fires in Indonesia, and creating food shortages in India, according to meteorologist Eric Holthaus, writing over at Slate.
That's no joke, and this one is particularly weird, because it's coming on top of another massive patch of warm water in the Pacific. Scientists call that one "the Blob."
These two phenomena are certainly unusual, and as Holthaus writes: "Humanity has never before had to deal with global oceans quite like this."
But as Barnston explains it, it's still too soon to say that this event will be worse than what many refer to as the "monster El Niño of 1997-98." The ongoing event recently hit a record for highest ocean surface temperatures measured on a weekly basis, but that doesn't mean it's the most intense in history. That's something that's measured on a broader, longer basis, and even with those particularly intense temperatures, it would still take more to beat the late '90s El Niño.
As for what comes next, we just don't know yet. As Barnston has written for NOAA before, we don't have enough data yet on weather events like this to say what will happen next based on what's happened in the past.
Some observers have said it's "virtually certain" that "we will be dealing with a very strong La Niña" next year and that "we should be preparing for a record hurricane season."
Barnston said it's just way too early to know any of those specifics. He told us that sure, it's "reasonable" to expect some La Niña cooling, but that we don't yet know that'll happen and if it does, the strength of it is "still VERY uncertain at this time."