This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Two powerful hurricanes and a strengthening tropical storm on Wednesday were churning through the Pacific Ocean, where waters were being warmed by a historically strong El Niño climate episode. Farthest west was Hurricane Lowell, followed by Hurricane Karina.
Both Category 4 storms were expected to pass well to the south and northeast of Hawaii, respectively, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). However, uncertainty remained about their forecast tracks, with the possibility of gustier trade winds and increased rainfall affecting the islands as a result of Lowell. Hawaii was still recovering from the impacts of Hurricane Lala, which brushed past the southern part of the Big Island, bringing destructive winds and severe flash floods.
Hurricanes Lowell and Karina were trailed to the east by Tropical Storm Marie, then a few hundred miles south of Baja California and "expected to become a hurricane later today," the NHC said. "El Niño warming sets the stage for these storms, which are fueled in large part by warm waters—when the tropical Pacific is warmer than normal, we see an increase in strong storms," climate scientist Julia Cole of the University of Michigan told AFP. A train of three cyclones "is definitely rare to see," she added.
A similar train of four cyclones occurred in 2015, another intense El Niño year, when Typhoon Kilo, Hurricane Ignacio, Hurricane Jimena and Tropical Depression 14E all worked their way west across the Pacific at once. This year's El Niño had a 69% chance of becoming the strongest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was already unleashing extreme weather across the globe, even though it was not expected to peak until around November. Peru, the world's largest anchovy catcher, was facing a devastating blow from warming seas that had gutted production, according to industry officials.
In Sudan, El Niño was blamed for delaying crucial rains that had caused water levels in the Nile to drop precipitously. El Niño is the warming phase of a natural cycle in the tropical Pacific known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and occurs every two to seven years. It sets in when trade winds that blow from east to west temporarily ease, allowing warm water that normally piles up in the western Pacific Ocean to slide back east and rise to the surface.
When those warmer-than-average surface temperatures last for a few months, they cause more storms and clouds over the region, which in turn cause ripple effects throughout the global atmosphere: hotter and drier conditions in some places, cooler and wetter conditions in others. Climate change increases El Niño's impacts. Because the greenhouse-gas-warmed atmosphere holds more moisture, El Niño-linked rains can become more extreme.
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