NOAA May 2023 ENSO Update: El Niño Knocking on the Door The tropical Pacific sure knows how to get out of a rut! Just two months after declaring the demise of an almost interminable La Niña, above-average surface temperatures have reclaimed the tropical Pacific, and temperatures in the central-eastern Pacific are expected to continue to rise. Consequently, an El Niño Watch remains in place, with El Niño conditions likely to develop within the next […] Weather WeatherBrains | May 12, 2023 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO Blog: Why Making El Niño Forecasts in the Spring Is Especially Anxiety-Inducing Given the relatively high probabilities for El Niño in our team’s April 2023 ENSO update, I decided to team up with some of my scientific colleagues, Antonietta Capotondi (NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory and University of Colorado, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences) and Aaron Levine (@afzlevine, University of Washington, Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies), to explain why […] Weather WeatherBrains | May 8, 2023 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO April Update: 62% Chance of El Niño Conditions for May–July Well, that was quick! Just two months ago I was writing about La Niña for what seemed like the 97th month in a row, and then by March La Niña had departed. Today we’re hoisting an El Niño Watch, meaning that conditions are favorable for the development of El Niño conditions within the next 6 months. In fact, there’s a […] Weather SnowBrains | April 13, 2023 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO Update February 2023: La Niña is Weakening – 85% Chance of Neutral Conditions Feb – Apr La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern—weakened over the past month, and forecasters expect a transition to neutral conditions in the next couple of months. We’ll check in with the tropical Pacific to see how things are going before continuing the journey into understanding winter daily temperature variability that I started in December’s post. Current events […] Weather WeatherBrains | February 9, 2023 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO Update Jan 2023: 82% Chance La Niña Will End by Springtime Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean from mid-November 2022 through early January 2023 compared to the long-term average. East of the International Dateline (180˚), waters remained cooler than average, a sign of La Niña. Graphic by Climate.gov, based on data from NOAA’s Environmental Visualization Lab. Description of historical baseline period. Hello from the 103rd Annual Meeting of the […] Weather WeatherBrains | January 17, 2023 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO December 2022 Update: La Niña Will Transition to Neutral in Jan-March As our regular readers will be very aware, La Niña has been rolling along in the tropical Pacific for many months, and our third La Niña winter in a row is underway. La Niña is the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (“ENSO” for short) climate pattern. The current forecast is for La Niña to continue into the winter, […] Weather WeatherBrains | December 9, 2022 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO Update: Another Winter in La Niña’s Grip? – November Update to 2022-23 Winter Outlook While it’s a little intimidating to put on these oversized shoes, I’m forging ahead in an annual ENSO Blog tradition and giving you all the juicy details about NOAA’s Winter Outlook (1). Regular readers may remember that Mike Halpert of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC) has been the blog’s winter outlook guru for years, but following Mike’s retirement earlier […] Weather WeatherBrains | November 23, 2022 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO November 2022 Update: 76% Chance La Niña Continues Through Winter It’s very likely that La Niña will last through the winter (December–February), with a transition to ENSO-neutral (neither La Niña nor El Niño) expected during February–April. Specifically, there’s a 76% chance of La Niña through the winter and a 57% chance of neutral in the February–April period. Related: VIDEO: La Niña & El Niño Explained in Less Than 2 Minutes […] Weather WeatherBrains | November 11, 2022 0 Comments