The notorious El Niño meteorological phenomenon was first noticed by Peruvian fishermen in the 1600s.
They noted that the warm water peaks near the American continent in December and named it "El Niño de Navidad," which means "Christ Child" in Spanish, because its effects are most felt around Christmas.
El Niño-generated climate has re-emerged in the tropical Pacific for the first time in years, and it could raise global temperatures and change regional weather and climate patterns.
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The WMO assumes with 90 percent certainty that this phenomenon will dominate the second half of the year, but the extent of its impact cannot yet be predicted.
The year 2016 currently holds the record as the warmest since there have been organized instrumental temperature measurements, and this was contributed by the very strong El Niño that developed during the period 2014-2016.
El Niño breaks temperature records
"The onset of El Niño greatly increases the likelihood that temperature records will be broken again," said WMO Director Petery Talas.
He called on governments to take preventive measures in order to save human lives in extreme weather conditions.
El Niño is not associated with human-caused climate change, but it can greatly intensify its effect as it further warms the atmosphere.
It is a phenomenon that appears every few years, along with the warming of the Pacific Ocean and the weak trade winds that blow from subtropical areas towards the Equator.
The counterbalance is La Niña.
The consequences are mainly felt in Southeast Asia, Australia, Africa and Central America, while in Europe they are mostly limited. The counterbalance to El Niño is the La Niña climate phenomenon, which has mostly occurred over the past three years.
El Niño brings wet and rainy weather, and floods in otherwise dry areas of South America, and a dry period in Indonesia. During the period of El Niño, the wind currents change, which then blows from the west to the east, and warmer waters accumulate towards the eastern parts of the Pacific Ocean, the ocean level rises and the thickness of the layer of nutrients in it decreases.
The result of El Niño is considered to be unusually heavy summer rain along the coasts of Ecuador and northern Peru, and drought in southern Peru, northeastern Brazil, Australia and the Sahel region, and unusual weather phenomena along the coasts of North America, with several tornadoes.
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