Strong 2015–2016 El Niño and implication to global ecosystems from space data

ABSTRACT

During 2015, sea surface temperature (SST) in the central tropical Pacific (TP) was warmer than normal, what indicated about the potential for the development of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). By December 2015, El Niño intensified when SST anomaly in the Niño-3.4 tropical Pacific area reached +2.9 °C, which indicated about the strongest event of the past 36 years. El Niño normally impacts weather, ecosystems, and socioeconomics (agriculture, fisheries, energy, human health, water resource etc.) on all continents. However, the current El Niño is much stronger than the recent strong 1997–1998 event. Therefore, this paper investigates how the strength of El Niño impacts world ecosystems and which areas are affected. The vegetation health (VH) method and 36-year of its data have been used as the criteria of the impact. Specifically, the paper investigates VH-ENSO teleconnection, focusing on estimation of vegetation response to El Niño intensity and transition of the impact from boreal winter to spring and summer. Two types of ecosystem response were identified. In boreal winter, ecosystems of northern South America, southern Africa, eastern Australia, and Southeast Asia experienced strong vegetation stress, which will negatively affect agriculture, energy, and water resources. In Argentina, southeastern USA and the Horn of Africa ecosystem response is opposite. One of the worst disasters associated with ENSO is drought. The advantages of this study are in derivation of vegetation response to moisture, thermal, and combined conditions including an early detection of drought-related stress. For the first time, ENSO impact was evaluated based on all events with |SSTa|> 0.5 ºC and >2.0 ºC. The current strong El Niño has already triggered drought in Brazil, southern Africa, southeastern Asia, and eastern Australia during December–February. Such conditions will be transitioned from boreal winter to spring but not to summer 2016, except for two regions: northern Brazil and southeastern Asia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.