A particularly strong El Niño is being predicted for this winter – that's summer for y'all in the Southern Hemisphere.
Current El Niño conditions are likely to develop into one of the strongest events on record — comparable to the major El Niño of 1997-98 — according to an experimental prediction system developed for research purposes by the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “Our forecast system has shown that it can do a remarkably good job of accurately hindcasting past El Niño events when we’ve tested it using historical data, which gives us high confidence in this forecast,” said NCAR scientist Stephen Yeager, who helped lead the modeling effort. El Niño events are characterized by warmer-than-average temperatures in the Tropical Pacific Ocean. The phenomenon, which usually peaks in December, can have a significant impact on weather patterns across the country, causing the northern U.S. and Canada to become warmer and drier than usual while the southern U.S. becomes wetter.
This El Niño coincides with already warming temperatures.
The Washington Post says...
The new prediction system suggested it could reach top-tier “super” El Niño strength, a level that in the past has unleashed deadly fires, drought, heat waves, floods and mudslides around the world. This time, El Niño is developing alongside an unprecedented surge in global temperatures that scientists say have increased the likelihood of brutal heat waves and deadly floods of the kind seen in recent weeks. Will that make El Niño’s typical extremes even more dramatic in the winter? “My answer would be — maybe,” said David DeWitt, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center. [ ... ] The phenomenon is marked by a surge of warmth in surface waters along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean. The warmer those waters become, and the more they couple with west-to-east flowing winds over the Pacific, the stronger the El Niño and its influence on global weather.
Just because an El Niño is a central and eastern Pacific Ocean event doesn't mean it affects only that region.
A forecast that the National Center for Atmospheric Research issued Tuesday was even more bullish, using a new prediction system to forecast that the coming winter could bring a super El Niño, with strength rivaling the historic El Niño of 1997-1998. That winter brought extreme rainfall to California and Kenya, and intense drought to Indonesia.
What an El Niño usually means around the planet.
A textbook El Niño includes tendencies toward dry conditions in such places as Indonesia, northern Australia and southern Africa and wet conditions across parts of South America, eastern Africa and along the southern tier of the United States. Signs are already suggesting a hot and dry summer for Australia, for example, where authorities are warning of heightened wildfire dangers.
So far, this is just a heads up. But it's a reminder that weather is now more than just a subject for idle conversation.
This is a 55 year record of the El Niño 3.4 Index.
NCAR describes the El Niño 3.4 Index...
Scientists commonly define El Niños using a metric called the Niño 3.4 Index, which is a measure of how much warmer (or cooler) the sea surface temperatures are in a defined rectangle of the Tropical Pacific Ocean compared to the long-term average. El Niño conditions occur when the average Niño 3.4 Index is above +0.5 degrees C. An official El Niño event requires the running three-month average index to be +0.5 degrees C or higher for five consecutive months.
So this will likely be the most intense El Niño since the "Cool Britannia" era.
