Above-normal temperatures for March-May due to El Niño — UN

GENEVA, Switzerland — The warming El Niño weather phenomenon that peaked in December was one of the five strongest ever recorded, the United Nations said Tuesday, predicting that it would produce above-normal temperatures from now to May.

Though El Niño is now gradually weakening, its impact will continue over the coming months by fuelling the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

Therefore "above normal temperatures are predicted over almost all land areas between March and May", the WMO said in a quarterly update.

El Niño, the large-scale warming of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, typically has the greatest impact on the global climate in the year after it develops, in this instance 2024.

It is a naturally occurring climate pattern typically associated with increased heat worldwide, as well as drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere.

The weather phenomenon occurs on average every two to seven years, and episodes typically last nine to 12 months.

Conditions oscillate between El Niño and its generally cooling opposite La Nina, with neutral conditions in between.

"There is about a 60% chance of El Niño persisting during March-May and a 80% chance of neutral conditions in April to June," the WMO said.

There is a chance ofLa Niña developing later in the year, but the odds are currently uncertain, the WMO said.

WMO chief Celeste Saulo said the record temperatures recorded over recent months were exacerbated by the El Niño effect.

But it needed to be seen in the context of a climate being changed by human activities.

Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide -- were chiefly to blame, Saulo said.

"Every month since June 2023 has set a new monthly temperature record -- and 2023 was by far the warmest year on record," she said.

"El Niño has contributed to these record temperatures, but heat-trapping greenhouse gases are unequivocally the main culprit.

"Ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific clearly reflect El Niño. But sea surface temperatures in other parts of the globe