Largest El Niño in living memory?

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0:40Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. Coming up on the programme, from the social network to the social reckoning, the writer and director Aaron Sorkin turns his attention again to Facebook. Listen, before I go on, I want to make something clear. OK. I have a hunch you're not a fan of Facebook. But I am. I am here to help Facebook, not hurt it. A trailer from the forthcoming movie. We'll hear from the woman whose whistleblowing inspired it and get her thoughts on the trial that started this week, which could reshape social media.

1:19More from her in 30 minutes. First, though, the BBC's climate editor says that normally the Met Office, the UK's meteorological research centre, uses very cautious and careful language, which is why he says its report today is so startling. It warns that the developing climate phenomenon known as El Nino is an unprecedented event, certainly the largest in living memory, and it will have an immense impact around the world, from Australia to Indonesia to India to South America and onwards. So let's take a global tour. Dr Kieran Hunt is a tropical meteorologist at Reading University in the United Kingdom.

2:03Before we begin our whip around the world, what is El Nino? El Nino is a patch of warm water that develops in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean and sometimes the central Pacific Ocean as well. It basically turns up every two to seven years. And then you get this long tongue of warm water that is usually about two degrees warmer than average for the time of year. And it tends to peak around November, December, January, which is where it gets its name, El Nino, meaning the Christ child in Spanish, because it was Peruvian fishermen that first discovered it. Can you predict when it's going to happen?

2:41Unfortunately not. It's actually very difficult to predict years in advance. What we do know is that you don't really ever get two El Ninos back to back. But no, it's not regular. So you can go many years without an El Nino and certainly many more years without a strong El Nino. And really, it's only around the springtime, so sort of March, April, May, that we have a kind of idea of whether an El Nino is likely to develop or not in the following winter. And just to be super clear about this, El Nino, because obviously we're going to be talking about its effects on the weather around the world and we'll come on to that but just to be really clear this is separate from man-made fossil fuel fueled climate change this is entirely separate that's right mechanistically it is separate so el nino is a kind of oscillation in the coupled ocean atmosphere system it's something that bubbles up every few years climate change is the kind of baseline that sits underneath that.

3:43So when we think about El Nino and we think about those warm sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, the way in which we define El Nino is that those sea surface temperatures have to reach a certain threshold. Now, with the baseline underneath increasing with climate change, we know sea surface temperatures worldwide are increasing due to man-made climate change. We're more likely to push into El Nino thresholds if we use an absolute value of sea surface temperature. And that's actually not very helpful for us, because what really matters about El Nino is not the sea surface temperature in the Equatorial Pacific, but it's the difference between that temperature and the temperature of the Pacific around it.

4:24So in the north and the south and in the west as well. So often when we think about El Nino's impact, it's not related directly to the sea surface temperature, but to the relative sea surface temperature. And sometimes we use this index called the Relative Oceanic Nino Index, or RONI for short, to measure those impacts. That said, the impacts of El Nino and the impacts of climate change not happen in isolation from each other, and often they can be coupled, but mechanistically they're separate phenomena. So El Nino clearly might amplify what we're seeing in terms of climate change and weather.

5:01Tell me about the impacts that we can predict around the world. Take me where you think we need to begin first. I think the best place to start is India, because that's my area of expertise. So I can probably give you the most detail. At this time of year, India is undergoing, and South Asia in general, I should say, so India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and a little bit of Sri Lanka, is undergoing the summer monsoon. That is heavy rainfall that lasts from June through to September. And of course, El Nino is not peaking yet. But during a growing El Nino, those summer monsoons in South Asia tend to be weaker.

5:38And we've already seen that this year. So this year's summer monsoon, which is already about two thirds, three quarters of the way through, is about 15 percent weaker than it usually would be, averaged over the whole of India. That doesn't sound like much, but actually those changes vary a lot spatially. So in this year, for example, central India has been particularly dry and the water security of central India is as a result quite fragile. And this has knock on impacts and things like agriculture, where India is highly dependent on its agricultural sector. So 15 percent doesn't sound like much, but it actually has quite severe impacts for farming in South Asia.

6:15Take me to another area that might be affected by drought as a result of El Nino. A good way to look at this is as El Nino develops, you get this patch of warm water, right? On top of warm water, you typically get heavier rainfall, but that moisture has to come from somewhere. So it tends to suck in moisture around this tongue. And so everything around the kind of edges of the equatorial Pacific tend to end up very dry at this time of year. So that's the area that includes all those islands from Southeast Asia down to Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, that kind of region.

6:51So you're seeing reduced wet season rainfall, which has these knock-on effects for agriculture. Now, Australia at this time of year is not having a wet season except in the far north around Darwin. And so that drier, hotter area results in these very intense droughts and heat waves. You talked about there will be places that will be a lot wetter. Take me to one of them. Yeah, so we should start, I guess, at the epicentre and right off the coast of Peru, where that water is basically the warmest. So that warm water is supercharging thunderstorms right along the coast of Peru. Before you get to the Andes, you get this region of much increased rainfall later in the year.

7:28Tell me about what's going to be happening on the continent of Africa. So Africa kind of gets three signals out of El Nino. If we talk about southern Africa, They're going to move into a wet season towards our winter, their summer, and El Nino strongly dries their wet season. Then the third region is East Africa. As we move towards the end of the year, October through December, is the period they call their short rains. This is an important wet season for places like Kenya, Ethiopia, parts of the Congo. And often in that area of Africa, during an El Nino, we would expect to see severe flooding.

8:08Kieran Hunt from Reading University and a little bit later in the programme will be hearing about one very narrow but very important place that is being affected by El Nino already. Israeli settlers have returned to the settlement of Kadim in the occupied West Bank 21 years after it was closed by a previous Israeli government. Kadim is the last of four West Bank settlements dismantled in 2005 to be reopened under the current Israeli government. And it's part of a sprint to expand settlements across the West Bank before Israeli elections are held in October. Settlements, just to remind you, are illegal under international law.

8:51Jewish nationalists in Israel consider them part of their historical birthright, but they're on land which much of the international community hopes will eventually form part of an independent Palestinian state. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson has this report from outside Kadeem in the occupied West Bank. Flanked by government ministers and rows of new white caravans, settler leader Yossi Dagan congratulated Kadeem's new settler families as the inaugural ribbon was cut. We've corrected the expulsion from northern Samaria, Dagan said, using the biblical name for the occupied West Bank, vowing that Jewish settlers would return to Gaza too.

9:36This area around Janine is the latest focus of Israel's push to expand settlements across the West Bank. Government ministers and settler leaders were invited to Kadim's opening ceremony. Journalists were not. Down a narrow track just behind the settlement, we found a Palestinian vegetable farmer and his family. He asked us to hide his identity. As a boy, he told us he'd watched from this same house as the settlement of Kadim was built, then watched it evacuated two decades later. Now he's watching the settlers return. This time it's different, he told me. Back then, the settlers lived alongside us.

10:20They lived their lives and we lived ours. But now, they already drove my nephews away from their citrus trees, telling them, you have no place here, don't come back.

10:36Kadim was one of four Israeli settlements forcibly evacuated in 2005. Israel's current government has reopened all four of them and approved more new settlements in the area as well, overturning a 20-year ban on Israeli settlers around Janine. By the time caravans had arrived at the new settlement of Emekdotan, Palestinian teacher Samad Jaba says the problems had already begun.

11:07Settlers try to enter our homes and provoke us in every possible way. The biggest problem is after midnight. After midnight, they have powerful floodlights, and they stop right next to the house, shining them directly through the windows, house after house, until two or three in the morning. Summer has watched the rapid growth in settlements and settler attacks in other parts of the West Bank, despite international pressure. We are defenceless. Europe has no time for us. America is preoccupied with Iran. China has no interest. Russia is busy with Ukraine. The United Nations is finished. And the Arab countries have their own internal problems.

11:56Alongside new settlements around Jenin, a new Israeli military bases, including one near Jenin's refugee camp, the first permanent Israeli military site built on land under full Palestinian authority control.

12:14In the past, we enjoyed the bliss of not having settlements. Now, we live in a hell made by settlers and their attacks. Kamal Abu al-Rub is the Palestinian Authority governor in Janine. It's as if the Israelis are racing against time before the upcoming elections. Many of the areas around the city are now surrounded by settlements. Farmers are afraid and anxious about settler attacks when they go to work on their lands. They have also cut off roads, bulldozed lands and cut down trees. This is the road that links the new settlement of Kadim to Israel. The last time I was here, just a few weeks ago, we sat in a cafe over here drinking coffee, surrounded by Palestinian shops and businesses.

13:02Since then, dozens of those businesses have been flattened by the Israeli army. it gives you some sense of how fast things here are changing. The countdown to Israeli elections in October, tallied here by the number of Palestinian buildings demolished, the number of new settler caravans. And that was Lucy Williamson reporting from the north of the occupied West Bank. This is NewsHour.

13:37This is NewsHour. It's live from the BBC. I'm Tim Franks. Hong Kong used to be one of the only places in Chinese territory where people used to have a degree of relative freedom. At least it was a place where people could gather once a year to mark the anniversary of the deadly 1989 repression of pro-democracy activists, or protesters indeed, across the Chinese mainland. But today, two of the activists who used to organise the annual vigils before they were banned have been found guilty of inciting others to, in quotes, subvert state power, in the words of the guilty verdict delivered in court.

14:14A third defendant had already pleaded guilty. The two convicted today are 69-year-old Li Chuk-Yen and 41-year-old Chao Hang-Tung. She spoke to the BBC just before her arrest in June 2022. This will be the first 4th of June since the national security law was passed. Many ask if the vigil will disappear. But I think we have been persisting for more than 30 years. It is more or less in Hong Kong people's DNA now. I believe we will see some candlelight on that night. Chow Hang-tung speaking to the BBC a few years ago. Mark Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and joins me live from New York.

15:01Mark, thank you for joining us here on News Hour. What can you tell us about these two who've been found guilty today? Well, I mean, they're very brave people. I mean, you heard from Chow Hong Tong. She's a brilliant geophysicist turned barrister who was just absolutely formidable in her determination to keep these candlelight vigils every year going on. They were the only place they could happen in China and now they're extinguished. that candlelight's been snuffed out with these convictions. At the same time today, I mean, it feels remarkable to go back to a time when actually these candlelit vigils marking the Tiananmen anniversary were allowed.

15:44But at the same time, it's remarkable to think that somehow holding a candlelit vigil is tantamount to, in quotes, subverting state power. And I mean, that they might face 10 years in prison. Putting the two together, there seems to be a disjunction. Well, China promised the people of Hong Kong and the departing British colonial authorities that all the freedoms that Hong Kong enjoyed under British rule would continue. And that included free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. And those are all gone now. And the court, the right to a jury trial has also been thrown out the window.

16:24So Chow and Lee were convicted by a panel of handpicked judges, despite the constitutional guarantee of a trial by jury. And as you say, these candlelight vigils, I was at the last one, the last legal one in 2019, there were 150 ,000 or more people there. And now you can't get 15 people together. And as you say, lighting a candle, Chow Hongtong earlier was convicted of incitement for illegal assembly for asking people to light candles. I mean, it's remarkable. And I think, unfortunately, it's telling about China's inability to keep its promises to the people of Hong Kong and really to the world.

17:02I kind of wonder if they can be trusted. Yeah. Well, you will be aware that the Chinese government's line on this is always, look, this is an internal affair. How we manage ourselves, how we decide what constitutes the correct standard of public behavior, public order, national security. It's our business. It's no one else's business. Well, they promised the people of Hong Kong that the common law tradition would continue, that these freedoms would continue. And again, I've read the verdict and these judges have twisted themselves into a pretzel to show that calling for the end of one party dictatorship is a subversion charge that can merit up to 10 years in jail.

17:42They didn't talk about any of the promises or provisions in Hong Kong's constitution. You're president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong. Is there any freedom? Are there any vestiges of freedom in Hong Kong now? Or does this trial mark the end of that particular road for the time being anyway? Yeah, well, it certainly marks a very significant blow to what was left of freedom in Hong Kong. I think to the extent there's freedom, it's in people's hearts. I mean, we had 2 million people repeatedly out in the streets in Hong Kong in 2019. We had people lining up for days before this verdict was announced, even though everybody knew it was going to be a guilty verdict.

18:25So most Hong Kong people always voted for democracy. In the 20 plus years, they had a chance to do so. And I think they would if they had free elections tomorrow. So I think freedom lives on in Hong Kong people's hearts. It lives in the continued fight by people like Chow Hong-tong, who is continuing to write and agitate to the extent she can from behind bars. But unfortunately, it looks like she's going to be in a prison cell for quite a few more years. Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. Thank you very much.

19:02Astronomers in Germany have discovered the fastest star in the Milky Way. The star named S301 travels at 25 ,000 kilometres a second. Extraordinary. Around the supermassive black hole that sits at the centre of our galaxy. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics say it orbits so dangerously close to the black hole that it could explain the properties of that black hole and test Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Dr Megan Argo is an astrophysicist at the University of Lancashire in England, specialises in supernovas and black holes, NewsHour's Paul Henley asked her to put this finding into context.

19:40A black hole, this is a supermassive black hole, so it's one of the largest black holes that we know of. It's certainly the biggest black hole by far in our galaxy. And it weighs about four million times the mass of our sun. So this is, by our local standards, this is a very, very massive object. And what massive objects do is they actually distort the fabric of space-time that's around them. So the sun distorts the fabric of space-time in the solar system, and we can measure that on our local scales. But this being, you know, four million times heavier distorts space-time in a much more significant way.

20:16And the closer you are to something that's this massive, the faster you are moving. How do we know that it's moving that fast? How do we track it? We track it using sensitive telescopes. So these observations were carried out by the very large telescope, which is actually multiple telescopes on a mountaintop in Chile. and what the VLT does is it actually combines the light from four separate telescopes to effectively synthesize a much bigger telescope so it's equivalent to having an optical telescope that's 120 meters in diameter and the size of that telescope not only gives you good sensitivity but it also gives you very very good resolution so effectively very very tiny pixels that lets you see lots and lots of detail at the distance of this object.

20:59And the importance of this star I understand is in what it tells us about the black hole. Explain if you can. That's right. So we've been watching stars orbit the black hole in the centre of our galaxy called Sagittarius A star. We've been watching this for many, many years now. And this one is exciting because it's the fastest one we've observed, but it's also the one that passes the closest to the black hole. And the reason that's really important is because we can use the orbits of these stars that go around the black hole to measure the mass of the black hole. That's how we know it's 4 million times the mass of the sun.

21:32But one of the really tricky parameters about black holes that we don't have a good handle on because it's so hard to measure is how fast they spin and in what direction they're spinning. And if you have a star that passes close enough, and we think this one is passing close enough, you can actually take a measurement of how that black hole is spinning. And that gives us, apart from anything else, gives us another way to test Einstein's general theory of relativity. It's been tested loads of times in loads of different ways, but lots of experiments to test it make it more robust as a theory. So the fact that this pass is so close to that black hole is going to allow us to measure the spin of the black hole over the next sort of 10, 20 years and do another high precision test of general relativity.

22:18Megan Argo, astrophysicist at the University of Lancashire, making things crystal clear for my colleague Paul Henley. You're listening to NewsHour.

22:52brand partnerships. Just last year, Harry told the BBC he couldn't see a world in which his family would return. So what's changed? Find out on The Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:10You're with the BBC World Service and live from London, this is NewsHour with me, Tim Franks. One of our big stories this week has been the start of what's likely to be a landmark trial in the United States, a consortium of states suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, over the social ills it's allegedly presided over, particularly when it comes to children's mental health. It's seen as a case that is unprecedented in its scale and its potential scope to remake social media. But it's not, of course, the first time that the social media giants have been accused of putting profit before safety.

23:45Just under five years ago, a former product manager for Facebook, as it was then before it renamed itself Meta, leaked thousands of pages of internal company documents to a newspaper and a regulator in the United States to claim just that. In testimony before the US Senate back in 2021, Francis Haugen said, I believe Facebook's products harm children, stoke division, weaken our democracy, and much more. It was such big news at the time that it's now been turned into a Hollywood movie, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and due to be released in October. Listen, before I go on, I want to make something clear.

24:26Okay. I have a hunch you're not a fan of Facebook. But I am. I am here to help Facebook, not hurt it. Okay? You send me a message. What would you like to talk about?

24:41The sound of the fictional Frances Haugen approaching a Wall Street journalist with her trove of company documents. I've been speaking to the real Frances Haugen. Five years on, what does she think has changed? When I came forward as a whistleblower, I brought forward just a sliver of documents compared to what we know today. So I brought forward about 20 ,000 pages of documents. And as a result of finally getting the legal right to subpoena these companies about what happened to kids, we now know millions of pages of documents about how the companies described the problem internally, what they did to try to solve it, and the decisions they made to not act.