El Nino is a natural weather event that occurs roughly every two to seven years where the winds that usually blow east to west over the Pacific slow or reverse which creates warmer than average temperatures in both sea and atmosphere.
An El Nino is officially declared when ocean temperatures rise 0.5°c above the long-term average. Already though, places in the central Pacific were 3.05°c above average on the 19th of September making this El Nino, according to the Met Office, likely to be the strongest in living memory.
As explained by the World Meteorological Organisation, whilst human-driven climate change doesn't directly intensify El Nino, their coexistence exacerbates the natural heating effect which causes wider global impacts such as major humanitarian crisis due to hotter, drier weather especially in South America, South Asia and Australia.
The UK may experience more storms and heavy rain despite avoiding the worst impacts but ultimately the UK's climate is more affected by long term climate change, according to the government website.
You may expect a crisis like this to warrant robust global response; however, in this circumstance optimism can be synonymous with wishful thinking. The disunity surrounding climate response results from the climate crisis's demotion in global priority due to world powers with the capacity to mitigate being preoccupied with other issues.
A lack of immediate visual evidence allows some leaders to ignore legitimate warnings for the sake of personal interest; however, El Nino may be the concrete evidence that effectively vindicates scientific warning and dismantles the ignorance of elites along with opposition to climate policy. Furthermore, it may reinforce public calls for climate action where, according to Yale University, 74% of the UK believe is human driven (a number this year's heatwaves may bolster).
Whilst efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change are too meagre, there's only so long powerholders can bury their head in the sand for - especially nowadays before rising sea levels drive them inland. And so, despite its impacts, hopefully this El Nino will be the vital, inescapable wakeup call the world needs.
In other words, we may have to take one step backwards before taking two steps forward.