What to know about the predictions for a potentially record-breaking El Nino

Seasonal models are predicting an El Nino climate pattern that could be the strongest on record, bringing with it more extreme weather.

“I think we’re going to see weather events that we’ve never seen in modern history before,” WFLA-TV Chief Meteorologist and Climate Specialist Jeff Berardelli, in Tampa, Florida, said Friday.

An El Nino event is expected to develop from the middle of this year, impacting global temperature and rainfall patterns, according to the World Meteorological Organization. While the models indicate that this may be a strong event, the WMO cautioned that the models also have a harder time making accurate forecasts in the spring.

El Nino is a cyclical and natural warming of patches of the equatorial Pacific that then alters the world’s weather patterns. Its counterpart, La Nina, is marked by waters that are cooler than average.

Berardelli said an El Nino event essentially redistributes heat on Earth. Currently, the subsurface heat in the Pacific is moving east across the ocean and ascending to the surface from the deep waters, the initial stages of El Nino.

The WMO's Global Seasonal Climate Update showed that sea-surface temperatures are rising rapidly. There is high confidence in the onset of El Nino, followed by further intensification in the months to follow, according to Wilfran Moufouma Okia, chief of climate prediction at WMO.

El Nino typically occurs every two to seven years and lasts around nine to 12 months, WMO said.

It looks like the predictive models are onto something, said California Institute for Water Resources climate scientist Daniel Swain. That is because the volume and the intensity of the subsurface warm water anomalies — or pulses of unusually warm water that are a key part of El Nino physics— are about as large as we’ve seen in the historical record, he added.

The very strongest events are called “super El Ninos.”

“One of the key building blocks to make it fully materialize is, in fact, occurring,” Swain said Friday. “We still don't know exactly what's going to happen. It's not guaranteed it'll be a super El Nino. But the potential is there for something genuinely remarkable.”

If the Pacific releases a lot of heat, it supercharges the climate system and wreaks havoc weather-wise, Berardelli said. With more heat, there will be stronger heat waves, worsening drought in some areas, but also more moisture in the air that leads to more intense floods, he said.

El Nino also subdues the hurricane season in the Atlantic because there is so much heat in the Pacific that outcompetes the Atlantic, Berardelli added. Places like the Caribbean will be extra dry this summer and likely have fewer tropical systems, he said.

El Nino has global impacts. Across the United States, it looks like this summer will be hotter than normal, with significant heat waves, Berardelli said. While the specifics are hard to pinpoint this far out, Berardelli is also expecting to see more frequent daily thunderstorms in the Southwest U.S.

Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon. This could be exacerbated in 2026 with a strong El Nino.

The excess heat brought to the surface by El Nino, combined with the planet's warming due to climate change, will lead to record-breaking global warmth, Swain said. He expects to see record global warm temperatures later this year, next year or both.

“All indicators are, at this point, that the next year is going to be a pretty wild year from a global climate perspective,” Swain said.

Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climate scientist, said that while El Nino boosts global temperatures a bit for a year or two, it’s basically a “zero-sum game." It typically oscillates back toward La Nina, which in turn lowers global temperatures for a year or two, he added. The thing to worry about is the longer-term, steady warming trend that will continue as long as people continue to burn fossil fuels, Mann said Friday.

Associated Press News Director Peter Prengaman contributed to this report.

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FILE - People walk through a part of the Amazon River that shows signs of drought in Santa Sofia, on the outskirts of Leticia, Colombia, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia, File)

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BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — A flight carrying at least two dozen migrants, including an Iranian woman facing persecution in her home country, landed in the Central African Republic on Friday. It is the latest example of the Trump administration’s widely criticized deals with African and Latin American nations to take third-country deportees.

The Central African Republic, a deeply impoverished country plagued by conflict, is one of at least nine African nations with this type of agreement.

Under a series of often-secret agreements that are part of a broad U.S. crackdown on immigration, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say.

The Trump administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries, immigration lawyers said.

It was unclear exactly how many migrants were on the deportation flight that left Louisiana late Thursday on the way to the Central African Republic’s capital, Bangui.

Some of the migrants are temporarily staying at a firefighters’ base near the U.S. Embassy compound under construction in Bangui, while others will be housed at other locations, according to a source close to the embassy. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not allowed to speak publicly on the matter, also said women and men were separated upon arrival.

Among those set to be deported Thursday were people from Iran, Jordan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia and Afghanistan, according to Ali Rahnama, interim executive director of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, who has been in touch with some of the migrants.

Three Iranian women in the U.S. were originally scheduled to be sent to the Central African Republic, according to Sahar Jalili Pawelski, one of their immigration lawyers, who said two of them received emergency court orders temporarily stopping their deportation while judges reviewed whether the government was acting legally.

All had been granted court protection against deportation to Iran after judges ruled they faced credible fears of persecution on the basis of politics or religion, Rahnama said.

“Despite being granted withholding of removal, these individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection and no support network. We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled,” Emily Trostle, an attorney representing two of the women, said Friday.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday would not comment on the case, saying it would not confirm future removal operations for security reasons. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Central African Republic has been plagued by years of conflict between pro-government forces and armed groups and is one of the poorest countries in the world. Despite vast reserves of gold, one in three people live on less than $2 a day.

It also is one of the countries where Wagner, a Russian mercenary group, was first active in Africa. The group has been responsible for President Faustin-Archange Touadéra’s security and fighting rebel groups.

The country remains one of Russia’s closest allies in Africa, despite recent tensions between Touadéra and Moscow over Russia’s push to replace Wagner with the state-controlled Africa Corps.

Rahnama of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund expressed concerns about an Iranian asylum seeker being sent to the Central African Republic, noting Russia’s influence in the country and Moscow’s close security ties with Iran.

The International Organization for Migration, a U.N.-affiliated agency, will “provide post-arrival humanitarian assistance” to the migrants at the request of the Central African authorities, a spokesperson said.

The U.S. earlier this year awarded $85 million to ⁠the IOM for ​operations in the Central African Republic to provide “assistance to migrants” and promote “community stabilization.”

Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana in Washington and Akram Oubachir in Casablanca, Morocco contributed to this report.

FILE - An arial view of Bangui, Central African Republic, is seen on March. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick, File)