RAYMOND ZHONG, CHICO HARLAN2026年8月13日印度古吉拉特邦一个受干旱影响的村庄，村民从井中取水，摄于5月。 Ritesh Shukla/Getty ImagesEl Niño is the planet’s naturally recurring chaos agent, scrambling weather patterns, spiking global temperatures and typically reaching full strength by December.厄尔尼诺是地球上一种周期性自然出现的“混乱制造者”，它会打乱天气模式、推高全球气温，而且通常会在12月前后发展到鼎盛状态。But this year’s El Niño, which is expected to be record-breaking, is already strong and having big effects, nudging up global temperatures and causing dry spells and crop failures on multiple continents.然而，今年预计将破纪录的厄尔尼诺现象已然强势来临，并带来了显著影响——全球气温被进一步推高，多个大洲遭遇旱情和农作物歉收。Parts of Panama, normally one of the wettest countries on Earth, haven’t had a major storm since early May. Ethiopia’s fertile highlands are enduring one of their driest summer stretches in four decades. And India had its fifth-driest June since the country’s modern rain records began in 1901.巴拿马通常是全球最多雨的国家之一，但部分地区自5月初以来未出现一场大型风暴。埃塞俄比亚肥沃的高原地带正经历40年来最严峻的夏季旱情。印度今年6月的降水量是该国1901年开始现代雨量记录以来第五低的水平。“This is a good sign that the El Niño response has really kicked in,” said Chris Funk, director of the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Funk termed it an “early onset El Niño.”“这是一个强烈信号，表明厄尔尼诺的影响已全面启动，”加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校气候危害研究中心主任克里斯·芬克说。他将这种现象称为“提前到来的厄尔尼诺”。These on-the-ground consequences reflect the magnitude of the changes in the Pacific Ocean, where El Niños develop when unusually warm waters build up. These episodes occur every two to seven years and have contributed to planetary swings going back millenniums. But this year’s is on track to be the strongest in nearly 80 years of records.这些实实在在的后果说明太平洋正在发生巨大变化。厄尔尼诺形成于太平洋异常温暖的海水积聚。这种现象每两到七年发生一次，几千年来一直在搅动全球气候。而今年的厄尔尼诺很可能成为近80年有记录以来最强的一次。Scientists are debating whether human-caused climate change is tilting the odds toward stronger and more frequent El Niño events. The El Niños of the past few decades have been comparably strong. But the variables that combine to create an El Niño are complex, and some experts argue the recent trend could just be a random signal.科学家们正在争论，人类导致的气候变化是否在促使厄尔尼诺现象变得更强烈、更频繁。过去几十年的厄尔尼诺相对较强。但形成厄尔尼诺的变量非常复杂，一些专家认为近期的趋势可能只是随机波动的信号。What’s clear is that El Niño’s gyrations are adding to the stronger storms, drier dry spells and fiercer wildfires that global warming is already bringing about. El Niño will magnify those phenomena in some regions and could lift global temperatures to record levels next year, as the heat from the Pacific spreads around the world.可以确定的是，厄尔尼诺的剧烈扰动正在叠加全球变暖已带来的更强风暴、更严重的干旱和更凶猛的野火。在部分地区，厄尔尼诺将进一步放大这些现象，并可能随着太平洋的热量向全球扩散，将明年的全球气温推至创纪录高位。“What we’ll see in 2027 is a sneak peak of what the new normal will be in 2035,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit research organization. “We’ll see things that have never happened before in our history in terms of temperature, drought conditions, extreme heat.”“我们在2027年看到的将是对2035年新常态的一次预演，”非营利研究组织伯克利地球的气候科学家齐克·豪斯法瑟说。“在气温、干旱程度和极端酷热方面，我们将目睹前所未有的景象。”伦敦西南部被烈日炙烤的里士满公园，摄于本月。4月一个炎热的日子里，曼谷街头，骑摩托车的人在等红灯时躲在阴凉处。A year of extreme heat极端高温之年El Niño events are measured by looking at sea surface temperatures in a specific rectangular zone of the Pacific Ocean. Temperatures there have soared over the past three months, and forecasts suggest that, by year’s end, they could exceed normal levels by more than they did during the strongest El Niños in modern history, which occurred in 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16.厄尔尼诺现象的衡量指标是太平洋特定矩形海域的海面温度。过去三个月，这一区域的温度急剧攀升，预测显示，到年底时，其超出正常水平的幅度可能将超越现代史上最强的几次厄尔尼诺现象——1982至1983年、1997至1998年以及2015至2016年。Between October and December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there’s an 81 percent chance that El Niño conditions will be “very strong,” meaning the three-month average temperature in that zone of the Pacific is 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than normal. But forecasts show that daily ocean temperatures during that period could spike to more than 3 degrees Celsius above normal.美国国家海洋和大气管理局表示，10月至12月间，厄尔尼诺达到"极强"状态的概率高达81%，这意味着该太平洋区域的三个月平均气温较正常水平偏高两摄氏度。但预测显示，在这段时期内，太平洋日均海温可能飙升至比正常水平高出三摄氏度以上。“Maybe it doesn’t sound that big: three or even four degrees. We see that temperature variation over the course of a day,” said Samantha Stevenson-Karl, an associate professor and climate modeler at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “But the ocean doesn’t change that much. Like, ever.”“三四度听起来也许不算什么，我们在一天之内的气温变化就有这么大，”加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校副教授、气候模型专家萨曼莎·史蒂文森-卡尔说道，“但海洋的温度变化没那么大。真的，从来没有。”The extra heat in the waters of the Pacific affects air temperatures, too. For the first months of the year, 2026 was clearly cooler than 2024, the planet’s hottest year on record. But Dr. Hausfather still gives 2026 a 40 percent chance of being Earth’s warmest year on the books, a sign of how the pendulum could be swinging. According to NOAA, last month tied July 2024 as the world’s warmest July since global record-keeping began in 1850.太平洋水温的额外升高也在牵动大气温度。2026年的前几个月气温明显低于2024年，后者是有记录以来地球最热的一年。但豪斯法瑟博士仍然认为，2026年成为有记录以来全球最热年份的概率有40%，这说明全球气温的走势可能正在发生转变。据美国国家海洋和大气管理局统计，今年7月与2024年7月并列为自1850年全球气温记录开始以来最热的7月。A rise in acute hunger面临突发性饥饿的人口增加El Niño causes big shifts in the winds that blow moist air across the oceans, and the effects on rain-fed agriculture are already emerging in some regions. By the end of the year, El Niño could cause nearly 50 million more people across the globe to experience acute hunger, an increase of roughly a fifth, according to the United Nations World Food Program.厄尔尼诺会导致海洋上空输送湿润空气的风向发生巨大变化，而这种变化对依赖降雨的农业造成的影响已经开始在一些地区显现。根据联合国世界粮食计划署的数据，到今年年底，厄尔尼诺现象可能导致全球近5000万人陷入突发性饥饿，增幅约为20%。At the western end of the tropical Pacific, El Niño has led to a dry summer in parts of Southeast Asia, delaying the sowing of rice and other crops in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines. In India, monsoon rains have picked up in some regions in recent weeks, though large areas of the country remain in a rainfall deficit.在热带太平洋西端，厄尔尼诺现象已导致东南亚部分地区出现干燥的夏季，泰国、柬埔寨、越南和菲律宾的水稻和其他作物的播种因此推迟。在印度，最近几周一些地区的季风降雨有所增强，但该国大片地区仍然处于降雨不足状态。At the other end of the Pacific, El Niño has delayed planting and disrupted crop growth in Central America. Rainfall in Guatemala was as much as 85 percent below average in July, and the stress on crops has been compounded by well-above-normal temperatures.在太平洋另一端，厄尔尼诺已导致中美洲播种延误、农作物生长受阻。7月危地马拉的降雨量比平均水平减少了85%，远高于正常水平的气温又进一步加剧了农作物所承受的压力。上个月，暴雨导致肯尼亚博戈里亚湖水位上涨，孩子们乘船去上学。危地马拉库嫩市的谢察克，一片因干旱而枯萎的玉米田，摄于5月。In Panama, the dry stretch has raised concerns about operations in the Panama Canal. During the last El Niño, in 2023-24, a severe rain deficit snarled traffic in the waterway, which raises and lowers ships through the locks using water from a rain-fed lake.在巴拿马，持续的干旱引发了人们对巴拿马运河运营状况的担忧。上一次厄尔尼诺期间（即2023至2024年），严重的降雨不足曾严重扰乱这条水道的航运。巴拿马运河通过船闸升降船只，使用的是一个通过降雨补给的湖泊中的水。As El Niño has gained strength, the Panama Canal Authority has tightened limits on how heavily loaded ships can be while crossing. Officials haven’t ruled out restricting daily transits, according to a statement last week from a spokesman for the canal authority, Octavio Colindres.随着厄尔尼诺不断增强，巴拿马运河管理局已经收紧了船只通过运河时的载重限制。运河管理局发言人奥克塔维奥·科林德雷斯上周在一份声明中表示，官员们尚未排除给每天的通行数量设限的可能性。It’s hard to predict just how much below normal Central America’s rainfall will be in the coming months, said Steven Paton, who monitors the oceans and atmosphere at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.位于巴拿马的史密森学会热带研究所负责监测海洋和大气的史蒂文·帕顿说，很难预测未来几个月中美洲的降雨量究竟会比正常水平低多少。The reason, he said, is that scientists’ computer models are trained on past events. This year’s El Niño is expected to be so much stronger than any episode on record that we can’t be sure how accurately the models will anticipate its effects.他说，原因在于，科学家用于预测的计算机模型是以过往厄尔尼诺现象为基础训练的。而今年的厄尔尼诺预计将远超有记录以来任何一次同类事件，模型能否准确预判其影响仍是未知数。“At the very least, it’s going to be as bad as the worst we’ve seen before, possibly much worse,” Mr. Paton said.“至少，情况将与我们历史上见过的最糟情形不相上下，甚至可能更糟，”帕顿说。In East Africa, El Niño usually brings heavy rain, and even floods and landslides, from November through January. But when the phenomenon appears earlier in the year, it can suppress rainfall in parts of the region, including western Kenya and Ethiopia.在东非，厄尔尼诺通常会在11月至次年1月带来强降雨，甚至引发洪水和山体滑坡。但这种现象如果在一年中较早出现，反而可能抑制该地区部分地方的降雨，包括肯尼亚西部和埃塞俄比亚。That’s been the dire reality in recent months, said Chris Shitote, a field scientist based in Nairobi, Kenya, for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, an agency under the U.S. State Department.美国国务院下属的饥荒预警系统网络驻肯尼亚内罗毕负责实地考察的科学家克里斯·希托特说，这正是过去几个月里当地面临的严峻现实。Mr. Shitote and some colleagues recently traveled through Kenya’s western grain-producing counties. The maize harvest was stunningly bad, he said. “It’s something some of us have not seen for the maybe 10 years we’ve been going out.”希托特与几名同事近期走访了肯尼亚西部的产粮县。玉米收成之惨令他震惊不已。“这是我们有些人外出考察十年来从未见过的情况。”Plants that normally grow to be nine feet tall topped out at just five or six feet, Mr. Shitote said. A typical harvest might yield 20 to 30 bags of corn for each acre of field, growers told him. This year, it looks like it could be just one or two bags per acre.他说，通常能长到近3米高的植株今年最高也只长到1.5至1.8米。农民告诉他，正常年份每英亩地能收获20至30袋玉米，而今年，看起来每英亩可能只有一两袋的收成。Raymond Zhong是时报气候与环境问题记者。Chico Harlan是时报全球气候新闻记者。翻译：经雷点击查看本文英文版。获取更多RSS：https://feedx.net https://feedx.site