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You’ve probably heard about El Niño, the climate system that brings dry and often hotter weather to Australia over summer.

You might also know that climate change is likely to intensify drought conditions, which is one of the reasons climate scientists keep talking about the desperate need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the damaging consequences if we don’t.

El Niño is driven by changes in the Pacific Ocean, and shifts around with its opposite, La Niña, every 2-7 years, in a cycle known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO.

But that’s only part of the story. There’s another important piece of nature’s puzzle in the Pacific Ocean that isn’t often discussed.

It’s called the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, or IPO, a name coined by a study which examined how Australia’s rainfall, temperature, river flow and crop yields changed over decades.

Since El Niño means “the boy” in Spanish, and La Niña “the girl”, we could call the warm phase of the IPO “El Tío” (the uncle) and the negative phase “La Tía” (the auntie).

These erratic relatives are hard to predict. El Tío and La Tía phases have been compared to a stumbling drunk. And honestly, can anyone predict what a drunk uncle will say at a family gathering?

What is El Tío?

Like ENSO, the IPO is related to the movement of warm water around the Pacific Ocean. Begrudgingly, it shifts its enormous backside around the great Pacific bathtub every 10-30 years, much longer than the 2-7 years of ENSO.

The IPO’s pattern is similar to ENSO, which has led climate scientists to think that the two are strongly linked. But the IPO operates on much longer timescales.

We don’t yet have conclusive knowledge of whether the IPO is a specific climate mechanism, and there is a strong school of thought which proposes that it is a combination of several different mechanisms in the ocean and the atmosphere.

Despite these mysteries, we know that the IPO had an influence on the global warming “hiatus” - the apparent slowdown in global temperature increases over the early 2000s.

Global temperatures are on the up, but the IPO affects the rate of warming. Author provided, data from NOAA, adapted from England et al. (2014) Nat. Clim. Change Temperamental relatives

When it comes to global temperatures we know that our greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution are the primary driver of the strong warming of the planet. But how do El Tío and La Tía affect our weather and climate from year to year and decade to decade?

Superimposed on top of the familiar long-term rise in global temperatures are some natural bumps in the road. When you’re hiking up a massive mountain, there are a few dips and hills along the way.

Several recent studies have shown that the IPO phases, El Tío and La Tía, have a temporary warming and cooling influence on the planet.

Rainfall around the world is also affected by El Tío and La Tía, including impacts such as floods and drought in the United States, China, Australia and New Zealand.

In the negative phase of the IPO (La Tía) the surface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean are cooler than usual near the equator and warmer than usual away from the equator.

Since about the year 2000, some of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases has been getting buried in the deep Pacific Ocean, leading to a slowdown in global warming over about the last 15 years. It appears as though we have a kind auntie, La Tía perhaps, who has been cushioning the blow of global warming. For the time being, anyway.

The flip side of our kind auntie is our bad-tempered uncle, El Tío. He is partly responsible for periods of accelerated warming, like the period from the late 1970s to the late 1990s.

The IPO has been in its “kind auntie” phase for well over a decade now. But the IPO could be about to flip over to El Tío. If that happens, it is not good news for global temperatures – they will accelerate upwards.

Models getting better

One of the challenges to climate science is to understand how the next decade, and the next couple of decades, will unravel. The people who look after our water and our environment want to know things like how fast our planet will warm in the next 10 years, and whether we will have major droughts and floods.

To do this we can use computer models of Earth’s climate. In our recently published paper in Environmental Research Letters, we evaluated how well a large number of models from around the world simulate the IPO. We found that the models do surprisingly well on some points, but don’t quite simulate the same degree of slow movement (the stubborn behaviour) of El Tío and La Tía that we observe in the real world.

But some climate models are better at simulating El Tío and La Tía. This is useful because it points the way to better models that could be used to understand the next few decades of El Tío, La Tía and climate change.

However, more work needs to be done to predict the next shift in the IPO and climate change. This is the topic of a new set of experiments that are going to be part the next round of climate model comparisons.

With further model development and new observations of the deep ocean available since 2005, scientists will be able to more easily answer some of these important questions.

Whatever the case, cranky old El Tío is waiting just around the corner. His big stick is poised, ready to give us a massive hiding: a swift rise in global temperatures over the coming decades.

And like a big smack, that would be no laughing matter.

Ben Henley receives funding from an ARC Linkage Project and is an associate investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Chris Folland receives funding from the UK Met Office via contract the Joint. BEIS/Defra contract GA1101.

David Karoly receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and and ARC Linkage grant. He is a member of the Climate Change Authority and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

Mandy Freund receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Jaci Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Team of researchers discover three of the frogs once listed as possibly extinct in first reported sighting since 1962

A rare frog that had not been seen in decades has been found in Zimbabwe, researchers have said.

The Artholeptis troglodytes, also known as the “cave squeaker” because of its preferred habitat, was discovered in 1962, but there were no reported sightings since then. An international red list of threatened species tagged the frog as critically endangered and possibly extinct.

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David Rose penned an attack described by expert as “so wrong it’s hard to know where to start”

In this new political era, climate scientists and their science are under attack. The attack is from multiple fronts, from threats to pull funding of the important instruments they use to measure climate change, to slashing their salaries and jobs. But there is a real fear of renewed personal attacks, and it appears those fears are now being realized. What the attackers do is identify and isolate scientists – a process termed the “Serengeti Strategy” by well-known and respected scientist Michael Mann who suffered these types of attacks for years.

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Work to preserve the crumbling birthplace of radar is to get under way later this year.

The rhino found on a Norfolk beach dates back about 700,000 years.

Ellen MacArthur and the New Plastic Economy initiative are determined to make a real difference in tackling the terrible problem of our plastic-polluted oceans

Last summer Adidas released a good-looking trainer with uppers made using plastic recovered from the ocean. Everyone was very excited, but my response was: “That’s not the most efficient way of cleaning up the ocean.”

Small bits of plastic packaging such as lids, sachets and films pose the biggest nightmare

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Nasa releases a video of the ISS crew preparing to watch the Super Bowl from 250 miles above Earth.

Borth y Gest, Snowdonia I’ve seen glaucous gulls squabbling around rubbish-tips on Baffin Island, but never before in Wales

Recent winter storm-surges from the cold north brought with them surprising visitors. Walking the coast path westwards I looked up and studied a clamorous swarm of gulls, vivid against a gunmetal sky. One, singled out in my glass, was bulkier than its companions, translucent somehow in the subdued light, its long wings white-fringed – a glaucous gull, Larus hyperboreus.

I’ve seen these fine seabirds before, squabbling around rubbish-tips at Iqpiarjuk and Pangnirtung on Baffin Island; or bathing in turquoise pools atop icebergs in the Davis Strait; or following the boat in which I crossed Admiralty Inlet when bound for the Brodeur Peninsula in quest of narwhal. Until now I’d never had a clear sighting of one in Wales, though it’s merely uncommon rather than rare as a visitor here.

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Gustaaf Hallegraeff has embarked on a program collecting sediment cores from along the Australian east coast, including Tasmania. The information will help interpret the recent large changes to aquatic ecosystems.

How do you rid your gardens of those pesky creatures- the common garden snail?

If the US shifts course on climate change policy, what are the implications for the rest of the world?

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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An otter family, a diving kingfisher and the Amazon coral reef are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Prime minister Stefan Löfven calls the Trump administration’s approach worrying as he announces new law binding future governments to a goal of carbon neutrality by 2045

Sweden has criticised the Trump administration’s approach to climate policy as it announced legislation binding future governments to a goal of phasing out greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, among the most ambitious by any developed nation.

“The position we hear from the new [US] administration is worrying,” prime minister Stefan Löfven said after announcing an ambitious new climate law promising zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

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Charity calls for tougher legislation to prevent shooting, poisoning and trapping of birds such as peregrine falcons, red kites, buzzards and hen harriers

Almost 200 reports of shooting, trapping and destruction of birds of prey were received by the RSPB in 2015, the charity said.

Some 64 out of the 196 reports were confirmed, including the shooting or attempted shooting of 46 birds of prey, including 16 buzzards, 11 peregrines, three red kites, one red-footed falcon and one hen harrier, a new report from the RSPB said.

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Extraordinary readings pile pressure on operator Tepco in its efforts to decommission nuclear power station

Radiation levels inside a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station are at their highest since the plant suffered a triple meltdown almost six years ago.

The facility’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said atmospheric readings as high as 530 sieverts an hour had been recorded inside the containment vessel of reactor No 2, one of three reactors that experienced a meltdown when the plant was crippled by a huge tsunami that struck the north-east coast of Japan in March 2011.

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Destructive seaweeds found in reefs worldwide will grow more poisonous and eventually take over in the fight for space

The destruction of coral reefs worldwide could accelerate as rising carbon emissions help coral-killing seaweeds grow more poisonous and take over, according to researchers.

A Griffith University study on the Great Barrier Reef has shown how rising CO2 emissions trigger more potency in chemicals from common “weed-like” algae that poison corals as they compete for space.

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Here in Perth, a battle is raging over a 5km stretch of road known as Roe 8. Work on the project, part of the proposed Perth Freight Link, began late in 2016 and as legal avenues to halt construction were exhausted, opponents resorted to non-violent direct action. Some protest “mass actions” have attracted more than 1,000 people from all walks of life and by the end of January, as bulldozers tore through the Coolbellup bushland under costly police protection, well over 100 had been arrested.

Clearing machinery arrives on site under heavy police protection, January 2017. Gnangarra

Proponents say the road is necessary to improve the safety and efficiency of freight traffic to and from the Port of Fremantle. Opponents point to freight alternatives that will avoid Roe 8’s destruction of Aboriginal heritage, endangered banksia woodland, and important wetlands. Critics have also decried the government’s lack of transparency and prudence in decision-making, and highlighted serious shortcomings in environmental policies and laws.

The state’s Labor opposition has promised to scrap the project if it wins government at the state election on March 11, yet to the shock and dismay of many, bulldozing continues.

How will the conflict end? While history provides no sure guide to the future, it does reveal that successful environmental campaigns have tended to share several key features that unsuccessful campaigns have lacked. What are they?

1. Elections

Some of the biggest environmentalist victories have been won at the ballot box. This was the case for the proposed Franklin River dam, which became a federal election issue and helped to bring Bob Hawke’s Labor government to power.

By-elections have also decided the fate of environmentally contentious developments. Wayne Goss’s proposed “Koala tollway” between Brisbane and the Gold Coast cost Labor nine seats in the 1995 state election; a by-election in February 1996 saw the end of both Goss’s majority and the toll road.

Similarly, the campaign against a proposal for agricultural development in Victoria’s Little Desert delivered a shock metropolitan by-election result that, along with sustained public pressure, quashed the proposal.

More recently, the East-West Link toll road in Melbourne was, like Roe 8, hurried into the construction phase before an election with no full business case available for public scrutiny. The campaign against the Link, which united public transport advocates and local councils, ran for more than a year and attracted A$1.6 million in policing costs. Labor promised to halt construction and following his electoral success in November 2015, the incoming premier Daniel Andrews tore up the contracts, setting what might turn out to be a crucial precedent for WA Labor’s Mark McGowan.

Even electoral failures can help environmental causes in the long run. Advocates for Lake Pedder in Tasmania didn’t attract political support for their cause from either major party, so they formed their own: the United Tasmania Group. It narrowly failed to win a seat at the 1972 state election, and Lake Pedder was lost.

But those who were galvanised by this failure were instrumental in the victory 10 years later over the Franklin dam, which transformed federal-state relations and launched the Australian Greens as a political force.

2. Unions

Many past environmental campaigns have succeeded only through union involvement. In the 1970s and ‘80s, almost 50% of the Australian workforce was unionised, giving the unions significant power to shut down contentious projects.

The 1970 campaign against oil drilling on the Great Barrier Reef claimed success when the Transport Workers Union and affiliates placed a black ban on drilling vessels in the region. The 1970s “Green bans”, led by Jack Mundey and the NSW Builders’ Labourers Federation, blocked a range of threats to heritage sites and bushland, including urban bushland at Kelly’s Bush on Sydney’s lower North Shore.

With union membership today at only around 15%, and the environment a low priority for some key unions, this opportunity for intervention has all but vanished.

3. Alternatives

Campaigns are more likely to be successful where environmentalists can point to viable alternatives for the projects they oppose. For example, opponents of woodchipping in East Gippsland in the 1980s produced a report showing how developing agriculture and tourism in parallel with a restructured and modernised timber industry would produce 450 extra jobs in the region.

This material was then used in political lobbying, as well as campaigning in marginal seats, leading to the declaration of the Errinundra Plateau and Rodger River National Parks in 1987. Logging continues, however, in adjacent areas.

Similarly, Citizens Against Route Twenty achieved success in 1990 with an intense media campaign that included an alternative vision for Brisbane’s urban transport.

Back to Roe 8

In sprawling suburban Perth, the track record of opposition to new roads does not inspire much hope for those campaigning against Roe 8. Previous protests against the Kwinana Freeway, the Graham Farmer Freeway and the Farrington Road extension were all more or less futile.

In each case the opponents were deemed to be “anti-progress”, with progress implicitly represented by the construction of new road infrastructure. Similar language pervades the current rhetoric around Roe 8, which is portrayed by supporters as a solution to all the traffic problems of Perth’s southern suburbs.

Sustainable transport advocates take a longer view; for instance, in the alternative plan laid out by Curtin University’s Peter Newman and Cole Hendrigan. This, however, has been rejected by the Barnett government in favour of the Roe Highway extension, which was originally planned for different purposes in the 1950s.

The protest against Roe 8 has two of the three key historical ingredients for success (an election, and a clearly outlined alternative plan). It has also harnessed the new power of social media and drone footage.

Opponents of Roe 8 at the end of an hour-long silent protest in Forrest Place, central Perth, January 2017.

Rarely has direct action clinched an environmental campaign, although there are precedents: protesters’ destruction of felled timber at Terania Creek in 1979 brought an end to logging. Tree-sitting and human barricades bought enough time for political change to halt the Cape Tribulation-Bloomfield Road in Queensland’s Wet Tropics. In Coolbellup numerous lock-ons and tree-sits have delayed works, but time is running out for the wetlands in the path of Roe 8.

After the March 11 election we will know whether the already bulldozed area will be restored, or whether the road will be built. Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain: pressure is building on resources and urban spaces, and the indicators of environmental health are continuing to decline.

This trend makes it ever more likely that our economic and political priorities will find themselves on a collision course with communities seeking to protect their local environments. It seems safe to say that we will see plenty more protests like this in coming years.

Andrea Gaynor is affiliated with The Beeliar Group: Professors for Environmental Responsibility.

Crewe Green, Cheshire No wonder the spines of this tiny mammal keep most predators away; it’s like touching surgical needles

Although the air is mild for the time of year, the sky is iron-blue, threatening another downpour. It is wet and muddy under foot, slippery too. Charcoal and murky-brown, dead leaves clot the woodland path. There is the breath of tannin; I can almost taste it. Two grey squirrels chase each other over rotten logs, then dash up a tree strangled by ivy. A blackbird skitters into some bushes. I call my jack russell, Roob, who is loitering behind, sniffing new scents; this isn’t our usual walk. She doesn’t appear.

I retrace my steps, calling again, scanning through perished bracken and withered nettles. I smell ghostly flowers and wizened rosehips. There are tangled brambles, bitter-black berries and bare trees. A gust of wind rattles their branches; they creak and moan in protest. Then I hear her, growling at something near a holly bush.

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Even the cleanest coal plants add millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year.