00:00Chloe, welcome. The headlines very catching, of course. El Nino developing over the Pacific,
00:05likely to be the strongest in memory, the Met Office warning. What does that mean in practical terms?
00:12Yes, so we've had this El Nino warning issued previously in the year by the World Meteorological
00:18Organization, and the UK Meteorological Office have done new analysis using their seasonal
00:24forecasting to look ahead at what this could mean in the winter season this year. So we've already
00:30seen some of the impacts that you've mentioned, but another impact was sort of lower rainfall in
00:36the South Asian monsoon as well, and the El Nino is occurring in the Pacific, so regions that see
00:43most of the weather impacts are countries that border that region, but this has widespread
00:47implications for weather patterns elsewhere because of interlinkages between how the Earth's
00:53weather system occurs. So what this really shows and what these meteorological organizations are
00:58hoping for is by issuing those warnings that we could have long-term planning and also put in place
01:04interventions so that the impact from potentially the biggest El Nino we've seen in living memory,
01:11but it could rival one that we saw earlier in human history in the 1800s that caused widespread famine
01:19in quite a lot of regions of the world and led to a number of deaths. So they're trying to
01:24basically
01:24put in place planning so that the impacts are reduced in this case. Chloe, you talk about putting in place
01:30planning and mitigation. I mean, realistically, what can you do? This is happening now, and you're warning
01:37of what's happened next year. It's too late, isn't it? And so no. So when the World Meteorological
01:45Organization actually issued their warning a couple months ago, what actually happened off the back of
01:51that, that there was some funding that was released to look into research of where the impacts would be
01:56and the countries that would be most affected. And so as a result of that, we should see implementations
02:03actually take place in those countries, which is very promising. However, in some respects,
02:09it is too late to reduce some of the impacts because this is coming off an amplification effect
02:15of climate change. So obviously, with climate change, we have this raise in baseline temperatures
02:20and an increase in extreme weather. And then with El Nino, we have this amplification effect.
02:25And so we do need long-term planning and resilience building for climate change as well.
02:30And if we had that, we would also be able to reduce the amplification of El Nino every time it
02:36occurred,
02:37because it's a natural phenomena that occurs cyclically. So every, I think it's seven to eight
02:43years about, it will occur. So yes, so it's promising to see those funds being released on the back of
02:50these warnings from meteorological organizations. Chloe, good to talk to you. And thanks so much for
02:54your time. Chloe Brimbeckham, the climate scientist from the University of Oxford.
