It is ice cold in Austria, and globally we are also in a cool to temperate phase: the alternating climate phenomena El Niño and La Niña influence the global average temperature by around 0.1 degrees Celsius, making them one of the strongest influencing factors of natural variation. The phase that tends to cool the Pacific (La Niña) or an intermediate phase of the cycle is likely to prevail at the moment. The warming effect of the previous El Niño phase contributed to 2024 being the hottest year in the history of measurements – and probably at least of the past 100,000 years.
