What makes this El Niño super - and what does it mean for us?

What is El Niño, and why is this one so super? In this talk, I'll introduce you to El Niño as part of a larger climate phenomenon that drives year to year changes in climate extremes, putting human and ecological communities at risk. This system changes where strong rainfall occurs, where droughts evolve, and how tropical storms develop. Particularly in poorer communities, it leads to greater food insecurity and disease burden, and it can unleash destructive consequences on buildings and infrastructure that take many years and large sums to rebuild. Ecological consequences of El Niño hit especially hard in tropical forests, coral reefs, and fisheries. Here in Michigan, we also feel the impacts of El Niño: it shifts the global atmospheric circulation in ways that bring us warmer winters and paradoxically sets the stage for more frequent "polar vortex" outbreaks that impose the most frigid winter cold spells.

For a long time, scientists treated El Niño as "natural" and had little basis to connect it to human-caused climate change. That perspective is changing. We now see an emerging consensus that the El Niño system will intensify in a warmer world. Is that intensification already happening? New data from my lab, along with other data from the tropical Pacific, say it definitely is. I'll describe how we use corals as recorders of past climate to show an unequivocal increase in El Niño strength over the past several decades, and why we think the impacts of El Niño are likewise intensifying. Because scientists have been studying El Niño for a long time, we have an idea of what the current super-strong El Niño will bring. That doesn't mean we know how to avoid the impacts completely, but it does offer a blueprint for preparation.

About the speaker:
Julia Cole is a professor and Chair of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at the University of Michigan. Her research explores past environmental and climate change, with a focus on the tropical oceans, coral reefs, and drought. She has led or coauthored over 100 scientific publications and teaches regularly in climate science, environmental change, oceanography, and science communication. She also contributes to rejuvenating the ocean biome at the Biosphere-2 as an experimental coral reef, where researchers can develop and test radical interventions for the coral reef crisis. Her other activities include fieldwork in remote locations; community outreach through public presentations, K-12 education, and media; and renewing her inspiration by getting outside with friends and family. Julie received her undergraduate degree from Brown University, and Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Columbia University. She held postdoctoral and faculty positions at the University of Colorado, and served on the University of Arizona faculty for 18 years. For her science communication work, she was selected as a Leopold Leadership Fellow and a Google Science Communication Fellow. She has family roots in Michigan, and has served on the board of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters Education Fund since 2019.