Transcript
Wenju Cai, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is the lead researcher on the study.
He and colleagues at the Organisation worked with scientists from America, China and the University of New South Wales.
Mr Cai said that using the main existing climate models, they looked at the impact of emissions at the 1.5 degrees warming level.
They expected to see some stabilisation of climate patterns, but instead found that the frequency of extreme weather events would increase.
With the increase in carbon dioxide, the global wind temperature increased too, bringing greater climate risks associated with El Niño events.
He says the findings don't bode well for future generations especially in small island states who will face more extreme droughts, floods and cyclones.
"So the South Pacific countries, these are the countries where the capacity to deal with extremes is probably lower than for example in New Zealand or Australia but they are more vulnerable climate change induced, extreme weather, extreme climate and so cutting greenhouse is always good but what we are saying in this paper is that even if we could say achieve 1.5 [degree celsius] the risk will continue to increase for another century."
Wenju Cai says people have already seen the devastating effects of extreme weather events.
"Take extreme tropical cyclone to countries where they don't normally expect such extreme tropical cyclones. Take for example in 1997 that is where we had one of those extreme El Niños where one of those tropical cyclones killed people in Cook Islands in a few hours."
A climate specialist, Professor Pete Strutton, from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, says while the Paris targets are admirable, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that it will be met.
"My personal opinion is that its increasingly unlikely we will stay under 2 or under 1.5 cos if there is further warming we have to act straight away if we are going to meet any of those targets."
El Niños events have been occurring on average about ten times a century up until 2000.
The nature climate change study indicates that even if global warming limits were achieved, extreme weather events would still increase in frequency, and possibly even double.
"In some ways the work is telling us some of what we already knew but putting some numbers on it so that can help us to plan for the future and know how many El Niños events we will experience in the next couple of centuries."
Dr Scott Power is Head of Climate Research/International Development Manager at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.
He says most small island states have a limited capacity to cope with major floods and droughts.
"Unfortunately, this paper indicates that these vulnerable nations could be exposed to El Niño impacts more frequently in the future, even if global warming is restricted to 1.5 degrees."
He said to make matters worse, this study indicates that the risk of major disruptions to Pacific rainfall have already increased.
El Niño-related impacts tend to add to other challenges of climate change, such as rising sea levels, ocean acidification and increasing temperature extremes.
Victoria University's James Renwick says while the study provides useful insights but more work is needed.
"El Niños turn out to be quite subtle things and quite difficult to get right in a model so I would say this is quite a provisional result and it looks very interesting and maybe we will see an increase, but I think if others can reproduce this result it will be even more interesting but right now it is out on its own."
The study was completed at the end of last year, but has just been published this month.
