El Niño not to blame for extreme weather

In his Sept. 30 article in the Daily Bee (“More weather extremes and El Niño”), Randy Mann lists and discusses some of this year's weather anomalies.

“Weather patterns have been changing and becoming more extreme across the globe, especially this year. We've seen big heatwaves in Europe along with flooding rains.”

“In addition to Europe, temperature records for heat were broken during the summer season across the United States, China, North Africa, and the Middle East. Scientists say that the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.”

“The extreme weather has also led to a record number of billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there have been $23 billion weather and climate disasters in the U.S. this year, which is already a record.”

“According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, extreme to exceptional drought conditions are still being reported from parts of the central U.S. Many locations [in the] southern U.S. are also experiencing massive droughts …”

“In terms of the entire planet, ocean temperatures are the warmest in recorded history.”

Mr. Mann fails to mention the overarching factor that virtually all climate scientists (95-plus%) agree is largely responsible for these extreme, record-breaking events — anthropogenic global warming. He gives the misleading impression that the current El Niño is the primary cause of these anomalies. El Niño (a cyclical, transitory phenomenon) cannot account for the well-documented, long-term trends toward increasingly more severe weather events.

JACK DeBAUN

Dover