Singapore and the whole of Southeast Asia are feeling the heat with El Niño, a natural phenomenon that causes temperatures to rise.
Experts told The Straits Times (ST) that temperatures in April and May, both among the hottest months of the year, are expected to remain above average.
This is because even though El Niño is receding, heat takes time to transfer from the sea surface to the atmosphere, they said.
El Niño has already peaked after it began as one of the “five strongest on record”, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
It noted that El Niño typically has the greatest impact on the global climate in the second year of its development — 2024, in this case.
Professor of urban climatology Matthias Roth at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Department of Geography told ST that an El Niño event will still “contribute heat” after it peaks.
Residual heat from El Niño can contribute to above-average temperatures, coinciding with the warmest months of the year, Prof Roth said.
“High humidity in combination with high temperatures could cause heat stress,” added Professor Xie Shang-Ping, who is an expert in physical oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
Heat stress, according to the Ministry of Health, occurs when one’s body cannot cool itself sufficiently, resulting in excess heat and damage.
But heat stress, said a Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) spokesperson, is just one factor that can rise with higher temperatures and humidity. Prof Xie noted that other factors like wind speed and the amount of radiation from the sun come into play too.
2024 is set to be an even hotter year than 2023, which is Singapore’s fourth-hottest year on record.
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said: “Every month since June 2023 has set a new monthly temperature record – and 2023 was by far the warmest year on record.”
“El Niño has contributed to these record temperatures, but heat-trapping greenhouse gases are unequivocally the main culprit,” she emphasised.
“Ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific clearly reflect El Niño,” Ms Saulo added. “But sea surface temperatures in other parts of the globe have been persistently and unusually high for the past 10 months.
The January 2024 sea-surface temperature was by far the highest on record for January. This is worrying and cannot be explained by El Niño alone.
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Featured image by MS News.
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