Higher shipping costs as the Panama Canal, one of the world’s main maritime trade routes, will further reduce daily ship crossings in the coming months due to a severe drought, the authorities managing the canal.
Argentina's National Meteorological Service (SMN) issued a report stating that the El Niño phenomenon had arrived in the country after water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean remained above those considered normal, thus triggering an atmospheric response to the warming.
Despite the southern hemisphere being still in winter, meteorologists foresee temperatures in the iconic city of Rio de Janeiro might reach 41°C as dry conditions heat up Southeastern Brazil, Agencia Brasil reported Thursday.
The US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Thursday the onset of El Niño, a weather phenomenon characterized by a warming of the surface of the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean that occurs every 2 to 7 years, which can increase the risk of heavy rains and droughts in some parts of the world and lead to record temperatures.
According to an investigation by the Australian Government's scientific agency (CSIRO), the El Niño phenomenon would cause an increase in underwater temperatures that would cause irreversible melting of the shelves and ice sheets, it was reported on Tuesday.
Schools in two cities in the Indonesian part of Borneo island will be closed for a week after smoke from forest fires caused air quality to hit dangerous levels, a local government official said on Sunday.
There's a 70% chance of a recurrence of the El Niño weather event before the end of this year, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The last El Niño occurred in 2015-16 and impacted weather patterns around the world, but researchers say they are not expecting this new one to be as intense as 2015-16.
Muddy water spilled onto streets and into homes on Thursday in a new round of unusually heavy rains that has killed at least a eighteen people in Peru and now threatens flooding in the capital Lima. The intense rains and mudslides over the past three days have wrought havoc around the Andean nation and caught residents in Lima, a desert city of 10 million where it almost never rains, by surprise.
Weather patterns associated with El Niño are sending mixed signals about the early prospects for cereal crops in 2016, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, according to FAO's Cereal Supply and Demand Brief, released on Thursday.
The World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan has briefed on the Zika virus situation. In the briefing Ms Chan gave a brief history of the disease and explained why WHO is so deeply concerned.