El Niño may make 2014 the world’s hottest year yet
New data show nearly even odds for El Niño conditions to develop next year, which could make 2014 the hottest year on record.
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El Niño is the name that climatologists give to warming of the surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Since the Pacific Ocean is so big, slight changes can drive weather patterns worldwide. In fact, the El Niño/La Niña cycle is the world’s biggest source of year-to-year climate variability.
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The tropical Pacific is now expected to warm throughout 2014, according to scientists from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center and Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society. That could produce a massive source of energy that would be strong enough to drive up global temperatures.
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It would be the first official El Niño since 2010, currently the world’s hottest year ever recorded. Four out of the five warmest years on record were all El Niño years.
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http://qz.com/147455/el-nino-may-make-2014-the-worlds-hottest-year-yet/