Photo: NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been sounding the alarm on El Niño’s end with the possibility of a La Niña directly on its heels for months now. The administration released data in early February that predicted a 55 percent chance that La Niña would develop in the summer months between June and August.
Forecasts released by the administration in March bumped those odds up to 62 percent in that same period and 82 percent by October. New data released this week has odds of that shift increasing just slightly. And while that bump in odds isn’t a huge one, they are still inching closer toward certainty with every month that passes.
“Forecasters estimate an 85 percent chance that El Niño will end and the tropical Pacific will transition to neutral conditions by the April–June period,” Emily Becker wrote on the administration’s blog. “There’s a 60 percent chance that La Niña will develop by June–August. Overall, the forecast this month is very similar to last month, and we continue to expect La Niña for the Northern Hemisphere fall and early winter (around 85 percent chance).”
As La Niña’s go, the event that supercharged the 2022-2023 winter was a unique one. It was the third consecutive year of cooler-than-normal ocean surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific near the equator. With no El Niños to interrupt that pattern and the planet’s climate changing, it made for record snowfall numbers in parts of the world where La Niña can contribute to cooler and wetter winters.
It can also put some pep into the Atlantic Ocean’s hurricane season, which forecasters predict we’ll see with this coming La Niña. In 2023, the hurricane activity was about 120 percent of the average season. This year’s prediction calls for about 170 percent of the average season from 1991–2020, according to researchers at Colorado State University.
As Becker wrote after analyzing’s the new NOAA forecast, “It could be another very interesting year, climate-wise.”
