Arctic sea ice loss to increase strong El Niño events linked to extreme weather: Study

The 2015-16 El Niño fueled deadly record cyclones in the South Pacific and Mexico, as well as  severe droughts that resulted in thousands of early deaths from fires and haze in southeast Asia and tens of millions going hungry amid crop failures in southern Africa.

Strong El Niños like that one could happen more frequently in the future as Arctic sea ice starts to disappear in the summer, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications. The research is the first to find a direct link between sea ice loss and the occurrence of El Niño, a warming of surface water in the eastern Pacific off of Peru that encourages higher global temperatures and extreme weather around the planet.

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