Are you planning to go to Greece next summer?
Then you should think twice, says Kikki Kleiven, director of the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.
“I don’t think I’d have used my credit card to book the whole family into that dream flat in Greece next summer, no,” she tells Dagbladet.
The forecast comes eight months before the start of summer. Kleiven herself admits that she does not know what the weather will be like.
“We cannot say with certainty at this stage what the weather in Greece or the rest of southern Europe will be like next summer, but 2026 and 2027 will be characterised by El Niño,” she says.
El Niño is a natural weather phenomenon that causes unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean and recurs every few years. A powerful El Niño has been building up since this summer.
– Combined with man-made climate change, this could make the summer of 2027 unusually hot, according to Kleiven.
She advises older people with health problems and families with young children in particular to think carefully before travelling.
The warning was issued at the environmental foundation Zero’s climate conference on Wednesday, where Kleiven presented analyses which, according to her, show that October this year was the warmest ever recorded on the planet.
Here at home, the opposite may be true. A strong El Niño increases the likelihood of a cold and dry winter in Norway and the Nordic region, according to Kleiven.
She nevertheless believes that the world is entering ‘uncharted territory’, and that time is of the essence:
“We will not meet the 1.5-degree target set out in the Paris Agreement,” she says. Right now, we have three years left.
Kleiven is a marine geologist by training and conducts research into palaeoceanography – the history of the oceans in the geological past. She has been head of the Bjerknes Centre in Bergen since 2021.
She does, however, have some hope. This came with the US mid-term elections this week. Kleiven says she woke up at three in the morning, incredibly excited, and realised something was happening when Texas went to the Democrats.
She hopes a changed political landscape in the US will make a difference to collaboration on climate research.
