NOAA ENSO Blog: Has Climate Change Already Affected ENSO? For more than 30 years, climate researchers have been puzzling about how human-forced climate change affects the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the warm phase of which we refer to as El Niño and the cold phase as La Niña. There are two aspects to this question: Has climate change affected ENSO already? and How will climate change affect ENSO […] Weather WeatherBrains | July 30, 2023 0 Comments
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
NOAA ENSO October Update: 75% Chance La Niña Will Last Through Winter For what seems like the 247th month in a row, La Niña is still in charge in the tropical Pacific. It’s really only been about a year with continuous La Niña, as it took a break summer 2021 and re-developed October 2021, but it seems like longer! There’s a 75% chance La Niña will be present this winter (December–February); forecasters […] Weather SnowBrains | October 13, 2022 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO September 2022 Update: 91% Chance of Fall La Niña, 80% Chance Winter La Niña Ocean and atmospheric conditions tell us that La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern—currently reigns in the tropical Pacific. It’s looking very likely that the long-predicted third consecutive La Niña winter will happen, with a 91% chance of La Niña through September–November and an 80% chance through the early winter (November–January). 91%! That’s very high. […] Weather WeatherBrains | September 12, 2022 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO Blog: La Niña’s Delayed Effect on Sizzling Texas Summers It’s been a scorching summer in much of the US, but no state has sizzled more than Texas. Does this summer’s unusually persistent La Niña bear some of the responsibility for the extreme heat? In this blog post, we’ll try to figure that out! Related: August 2022 ENSO Update: La Niña Continues ENSO impacts on summer US climate: concurrent versus […] Weather WeatherBrains | August 29, 2022 0 Comments
How Does El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Affect Salmon? This article was originally published on climate.gov When we discuss the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (“ENSO” for short) at the blog, we often take a rather human or physics-y view of the climate phenomenon. We’ve published loads of articles discussing the mechanics for how ENSO works in the atmosphere and the ocean, and how ENSO impacts humans from droughts and wildfires […] Weather WeatherBrains | August 11, 2022 0 Comments
August 2022 ENSO Update: La Niña Continues View this post on Instagram A post shared by NOAA Climate.gov (@noaaclimate) This article was originally published on climate.gov La Niña continues! It’s likely that the La Niña three-peat will happen: the chance that the current La Niña will last through early winter is over 70%. If it happens, this will be only the third time with three La Niña winters in a row […] Weather WeatherBrains | August 11, 2022 0 Comments
NOAA: July 2022 ENSO Update – 66% Chance of a La Niña Winter, ~5% Chance of El Niño Winter I’m in San Diego this week, gazing out across the Pacific toward La Niña’s cool tropical ocean surface. (I’m not here for Comic-Con, but there are a lot of posters around the city that keep that upcoming event in the forefront.) Just over my horizon, La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (“ENSO” for short)—remains in force, despite […] Weather WeatherBrains | July 15, 2022 0 Comments
June 2022 ENSO Update: Triple Dip? 59% Chance of La Niña by Early Next Winter I’m definitely starting to sound like a broken record here! La Niña is favored to continue through the summer and into the winter. That said, chances of La Niña through summer have a fairly small edge over chances of a transition to neutral—52% for La Niña vs. 46% for neutral in July–September. There’s about a 59% chance of La Niña […] Weather WeatherBrains | June 10, 2022 0 Comments
May 2022 ENSO Update: 61% Chance of Another La Niña Next Fall and Early Winter Written by Emily Becker and published on climate.gov on May 12, 2022 May 2022 ENSO update: piece of cake La Niña continued through April, and forecasters estimate a 61% chance of a La Niña three-peat for next fall and early winter. Current El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO, the entire El Niño and La Niña system) conditions, the forecast for the rest […] Weather WeatherBrains | May 12, 2022 0 Comments
NOAA ENSO April 2022 Update: 50-55% Chance of La Niña Continuing In To Fall La Niña continues in the tropical Pacific, with both the ocean and atmosphere clearly reflecting La Niña conditions. The current forecast favors the continuation of La Niña through the summer (59% chance), with a slightly lower chance into the fall (50-55% chance). A third-year La Niña would be pretty unusual—we’ve only seen two others since 1950. I’ll run the numbers […] Weather WeatherBrains | April 14, 2022 0 Comments
How Did They Do? NOAA Analyzes its 2021/22 Winter Outlook Some would call it the most famous annual March tradition. No, I’m not talking about March Madness or St. Patrick’s Day. I’m talking about our annual look back at the Climate Prediction Center’s Winter Outlook to see how well it did. Warning: Some math will follow. At the ENSO Blog, we’re not the types to simply give you a thumbs […] Weather WeatherBrains | April 8, 2022 1 Comment
NOAA ENSO March 2022 Update: La Niña to Continue in to Summer and Potentially Beyond Three-bean salads are a blend of sweet-sour tastiness, implying all good things come in threes. Well, depending on your opinion of La Niña, maybe not all good things, as La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern—reasserted itself in the tropical Pacific this past month with some of the strongest atmosphere-ocean coupling of our double-dip La Niñas […] Weather WeatherBrains | March 14, 2022 0 Comments
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