Hurricane Fiona shows La Niña’s volatility — fossil fuels make it worse

Hurricane Fiona shows La Niña’s volatility — fossil fuels make it worse





Hurricane Fiona’s brutal raking of Puerto Rico and the wider Caribbean resulted from the combined effects of natural weather phenomena like La Niña and the human-made climate change that amplifies the fury and damage of such storms.


While La Niña is a moderately difficult weather phenomenon to predict, there is one thing we can say for certain: To reduce the future ravages of such monster storms, we must curb the fossil fuels feeding climate chaos.


As fossil fuel companies continue with unfettered oil, gas and coal production, they fuel the climate emergency that is hurting every aspect of our lives through vicious storms and heatwaves, water shortages and energy volatility.

Climate change is happening so fast that efforts to adapt, where they exist at all, cannot keep up, making us vulnerable to increasingly unpredictable weather.

This is not to say that weather has ever been completely predictable. Our entry into a third year of La Niña is proof. La Niña and its counterpart, El Niño, are phases of the natural climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.

During El Niño, the Pacific winds that normally blow east to west along the equator weaken, allowing warm water to collect in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This results in warmer and wetter conditions in the eastern Pacific.

During La Niña, the same Pacific winds strengthen, pushing warm water back to the west and leaving cooler and drier conditions. Although ENSO originates in the equatorial Pacific, the changes in temperature and precipitation affect global weather patterns.


The shifts between El Niño and La Niña typically occur every two to seven years, but a third straight year of La Niña is rare. For the United States, La Niña brings drier conditions to the Southwest, bolstering drought and wildfire. In the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, it brings warmer temperatures and less wind shear across the Atlantic, allowing tropical storms and hurricanes to grow stronger. All these conditions are extended by a third year of La Niña.

Now take the moderately predictable La Niña and add climate change’s effects. La Niña makes the Southwest drier, but fossil-fueled climate change is also worsening drought conditions in the region. La Niña promotes the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic, but fossil-fueled climate change also is causing Atlantic hurricanes to intensify more quickly, increasing the chances of ever-more destructive storms.

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