Hurricane Lala on Saturday lashed Hawaii’s Big Island with heavy rain and strong winds, as forecasters warned of potentially dangerous flooding across the US Pacific island state.
Because a warmer ocean and atmosphere increase the availability of energy and moisture for extreme weather events, such as heat waves and heavy rainfall, human-caused climate change can amplify El Nino’s impacts.
“This rainfall will produce life-threatening flooding and mudslides, especially in areas of steep terrain,” the US National Hurricane Center said in its 1800 GMT advisory. Temperatures are already so high that the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration now predicts a 69 percent chance of a “historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Nino events dating back to 1950” when it peaks between October and December. El Nino, a natural climate pattern when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean become unusually warm, tends to promote hurricane activity in the Pacific while suppressing it in the Atlantic.
