El Niño is gestating in the Pacific, possibly heralding warmer global temps and extreme weather in 2019

Here is how sea surface temperatures differed from the the 1981-2010 average during May of 2018. (Source: ENSO Blog/Climate.gov) While 2019 is still a long way off, we've now got some strong hints that the coming year could bring even warmer global temperatures, plus droughts in some regions, and floods in others. These climatic and weather effects would come from an El Niño that seems to be gestating in the tropical Pacific. A warming of tropical Pacific waters beneath the surface, along with the output of computer and statistical modeling, have prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue an official El Niño watch. That means conditions are favorable for the development of the weather-altering phenomenon within the next six months. Based on all of the evidence available now, forecasters peg the odds of El Niño emerging in the tropical Pacific at 65 percent. It would most likely emerge during fall in the Northern Hemisphere and continue through winter of 2019. We should care about this because El Niño can give a big boost to global temperatures, while also reordering weather patterns around the world. El Niño, which means The Little Boy, or Christ Child in Spanish, causes heat stored in the oceans to pour out into the atmosphere, boosting global temperatures that are already rising thanks to our emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. In fact, a monster El Niño in 2016 contributed to record breaking global temperatures that year — a record that still stands. (Although it would have been record warm that year even without it.) El Niño also leads to shifts in the jet stream that ultimately cause some regions to be drier than average, and others wetter, as seen in this illustration: