The El Nino weather condition, which added extra heat to already record warm global temperatures, has been pronounced dead by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. The El Nino, formed a year ago, has been blamed for a wild 12 months of heat waves and extreme weather.
The world is now in a neutral condition when it comes to the important natural El Nino Southern Oscillation, which warps weather systems worldwide. However, it likely won’t last. There’s a 65 percent chance that a La Nina, a cooling of the same parts of the Pacific that often has opposite effects, will form in the July, August, and September time period.
One of the biggest effects of La Nina is that it tends to make the Atlantic hurricane season more active, and that storm season starts its peak in August.
Both El Nino and La Nina create “potential hot spots” for extreme weather but in different places and of different types. La Nina tends to bring drier conditions across the southern tier of the United States in the winter, and if global warming is added, those drier conditions could intensify into droughts.
Storm systems, mostly in the winter, move slightly northward with a shift in the jet stream during La Nina years, bringing more rain and snow north.
Even though La Nina tends to be cooler, there will likely be a residual effect of the exiting El Nino on global temperatures. This year has seen each month breaking global records so far. No more than 8% of last year’s record heat could be attributed to El Nino and other natural variability, while the rest was from human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. A neutral ENSO is best for agriculture.
Coral reef experts say the combination of record ocean temperatures and the boost of heating from El Nino have led to a major global bleaching event threatening and at times killing vulnerable coral. Before this year’s El Nino, the world had back-to-back La Ninas, which is unusual.
