The category 4 cyclone - the fifth storm of this year’s season, and the strongest so far - has buffeted the Queensland coast across a wide area centred on Airlie Beach.
Firefighters fight forest fire in Indonesia, triggered in part by El Nino.
EPA/RONY MUHARRMAN
Since 1999, Australia has swung between drought and deluge with surprising speed, because El Niño has fallen into sync with similar patterns in the Indian and Southern Oceans.
The site of the hillfort of Vugala, northern Viti Levu island (Fiji). This was one of many hillforts in the area – home to a few hundred people according to reports from the 1840s – that were probably established around AD 1400 in response to conflict resulting from a food crisis that had come about as a result of an enduring fall in sea level.
Patrick Nunn
El Niño has a hugely pervasive effect on global temperatures - for every degree the tropical Pacific warms, land temperatures warm by 1.5 degrees. How? Because the tropical ocean is a very good heater.
More frequent disasters – such as Cyclone Pam which struck Vanuatu this year – will leave Pacific islands struggling to recover.
Edgar Su/Reuters
As Prime Minister Tony Abbott attends the Pacific Island Forum summit today, attention has again turned to how the low-lying islands will deal with global warming.
People in the Philippines have been warned to brace for wet and wild weather, as this year’s El Nino shapes up to be the strongest since 1998.
EPA/RITCHIE B. TONGO/AAP
The seesaw between El Niño and La Niña is set to get stronger with global warming. Signs are that this year and next will deliver a big swing from one to the other, prompting fires and floods across the world.
The large 1982 El Niño contributed to the Ash Wednesday bushfires that killed 75 people in south east Australia.
Sydney Oats/Wikimedia
Over the past decade, warming air temperatures at Earth’s surface appear to have slowed. But that ignores the vast majority of heat going steadily into the ocean. And, a new paper shows, that makes no difference to the long-term prognosis.
Cyclone Pam has left a shell of Uwen Garae’s home in Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Dave Hunt/AAP
The devastation to Vanuatu left in the wake of Cyclone Pam shows small islands in the Pacific need a climate insurance scheme, similar to what has been achieved in the Caribbean.
Destruction caused by Cyclone Pam is visible on the outskirts of Port Vila.
AAP Image/ Care Australia, Tom Perry
Many people around the world, in certain locations, have asked, “where is global warming?” This is because they have experienced very cold wintry conditions and weird weather that they do not associate…
Their home is getting warmer, even if ours isn’t.
EPA
There seem to have been a dozen or so explanations for why the Earth’s surface has warmed at a slower rate over the past 15 years compared to earlier decades. This is perhaps not so surprising given the…