Meteorologists are forecasting a 'super' El Niño. What does that mean for B.C.?

Meteorologists are forecasting a 'super' El Niño. What does that mean for B.C.?

Event 'may exceed anything we've seen at least for the past 100 years,' meteorologist says

A "super" El Niño is developing in the Pacific Ocean.

The weather pattern can affect temperature and precipitation across North America, but what does it mean for British Columbia? And will it have an impact on the wildfire situation in the province?

Environment Canada meteorologist Bill Merryfield joined CBC's Daybreak North to break it down.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

El Niño is when surface waters in the Pacific Ocean along the equator, stretching from South America most of the way across the Pacific Ocean, become warmer than usual.

Some El Niño events come in different categories depending on their strength … from weak to very strong. A very strong El Niño, which is sometimes called a "super" El Niño, is when this surge in ocean surface temperatures down by the equator exceeds about 2 C.

'Super' El Niño could bring more extreme weather

How strong is this El Niño expected to be?

The forecast models actually are pointing toward a real doozy of an event, which may exceed anything we've seen at least for the past 100 years. The threshold for a super El Niño is 2 C. Most of the models are pointing toward this peaking over 3 C, which would be literally off the charts.

Could this affect the B.C. wildfire situation?

Not yet. The impacts of El Niño on Canada are not really significant during the summer, except that it does tend to suppress hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

El Niño itself … tends to peak right around the end of the year, and that's when the effects on B.C. begin to set in.

So, what we do expect to see is a very high likelihood of warmer than normal, milder than normal winter temperatures stretching right through the spring and … an elevated chance that we might have below normal precipitation over the course of the winter.

These two things together could spell an unusually low snowpack, especially on the coast where whether we get rain or snow depends sort of on which side of the the freezing line we're on.

What exactly is a ‘super’ El Niño? And what does it mean for you?

What are the longer term consequences?

The tendency for a lower snowpack and also mild temperatures stretching for the spring together spell an early melt for the snowpack. [That] can dry out the land surface and the vegetation and lead to drought conditions and an increased risk of wildfires if the rainfall next spring and early summer doesn't make up the difference.

Is this connected to climate change?

El Niño itself is a natural phenomenon. It's sort of this pendulum that swings back and forth in the Pacific Ocean and affects weather patterns worldwide.

In the last number of decades, of course, the planet as a whole has been warming, and this does affect the benchmark that we use to measure whether there is an El Niño or not. So when I was saying that these temperatures along the equator are going to be warmer than we've ever seen, part of that is due the overall warming of the planet.

Even if you factor that out, we are looking at possibly a historic event.

In terms of how the warming of the planet will affect El Niño, that's still something scientists are debating. There's one school of thought that El Niños will become more severe, but there are some simulations which suggest the opposite.