Australian-led research has found that even if global warming is kept to only 1.5°C, extreme El Niño events are likely to become twice as common.

CSIRO researcher and lead author Dr Guojian Wang said the growing risk of extreme El Niño events does not stabilise in a stabilised climate.

“Currently the risk of extreme El Niño events is around five events per 100 years,” Dr Wang said.

“This doubles to approximately 10 events per 100 years by 2050, when our modelled emissions scenario (RCP 2.6) reaches a peak of 1.5°C warming.

“After this, as faster warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific persists, the risk of extreme El Niño continues upwards to about 14 events per 100 years by 2150.

“This result is unexpected and shows that future generations will experience greater climate risks associated with extreme El Niño events than seen at 1.5°C warming.”

The research was based on five climate models that provided future scenarios past the year 2100.

The models were run using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's lowest emissions scenario (RCP2.6), which requires negative emissions late in the century.

Director of the Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research and report co-author, Dr Wenju Cai, said that this research continues important work on the impacts of climate change on the El Niño-Southern Oscillation which is a significant driver of global climate.

“The most severe previous extreme El Niño events occurred in 1982/83, 1997/98 and 2015/16, years associated with worldwide climate extremes,” Dr Cai said.

“Extreme El Niño events occur when the usual El Niño Pacific rainfall centre is pushed eastward toward South America, sometimes up to 16,000 kilometres, causing massive changes in the climate. The further east the centre moves, the more extreme the El Niño.

“This pulls rainfall away from Australia bringing conditions that have commonly resulted in intense droughts across the nation. During such events, other countries like India, Ecuador, and China have experienced extreme events with serious socio-economic consequences.”

Dr Cai added that while previous research suggested that extreme La Niña events would double under a 4.5°C warming scenario, results here indicated that under a scenario of climate stabilisation (i.e. 1.5°C warming) there was little or no change to these La Niña events.

The research was conducted by researchers at the Hobart based Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research, an international collaboration between CSIRO, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Tasmania.

The study is accessible here.