After three consecutive years of an unusually stubborn pattern, La Niña has officially ended and El Niño is on the way.
Scientists at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center suspect a “rapid evolution” to El Niño — known for accelerating planetary warming and inducing extreme weather — could occur this summer.
The markers of La Niña all but disappeared in February. La Niña is associated with cooler-than-normal waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean and can promote more intense Atlantic hurricanes.
DIAGNOSTIC DISCUSSION Source – CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER/NCEP/NWS
During February 2023, below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) weakened and currently persist only in the central Pacific Ocean. SSTs surged in most of the equatorial Pacific, a sure sign of the formation of El Niño.
At the present time, scientists say Earth’s climate is neutral — with neither La Niña nor El Niño influencing global weather patterns. ENSO-neutral conditions are expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere into the spring and early summer of 2023.
The transition to El Niño during the later summer months could have a major influence over the Atlantic and Pacific hurricane seasons, reports CNN News.
“Tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic is more sensitive to El Niño influences than in any other ocean basin,” NOAA said. Generally, El Niño reduces Atlantic hurricane activity but has the opposite result in the Pacific, where warmer waters can produce more intense hurricanes.
The warmer the Pacific Ocean is, especially in the eastern region, tropical cyclone quantity, and strength can tend to increase. The Atlantic, however, sees fewer hurricanes as a result of increased upper-level winds that prevent hurricanes from developing.
The return of El Nino does raise concerns about how it could accelerate global warming and the climate change crisis, according to the Washington Post. The last major El Niño episode in 2016 sent average global temperatures to record highs and contributed to devastating rainforest loss, coral bleaching, polar ice melt, and wildfires.
El Niño events that intense typically occur about once every 15 years on average, so it remains to be seen — if another episode begins this year — whether it could pack such a punch, said Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.
“It may not be one of these blockbusters; it may be garden variety,” said McPhaden, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration but is not involved in its El Niño forecasting. “It could have some significant impacts around the world.”
Still, El Niño’s arrival remains uncertain, the climate forecasters stressed. Right now, scientists are predicting just greater than 50-50 odds of El Niño in late summer, approaching a two-in-three chance by fall.
