What does this mean?
> El Niño is a climate pattern that naturally occurs every two to seven years when ocean surface temperatures warm in the eastern Pacific.
From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)[2]:
> El Niño can affect our weather significantly. The warmer waters cause the Pacific jet stream to move south of its neutral position. With this shift, areas in the northern U.S. and Canada are dryer and warmer than usual. But in the U.S. Gulf Coast and Southeast, these periods are wetter than usual and have increased flooding.
> El Niño also has a strong effect on marine life off the Pacific coast. During normal conditions, upwelling brings water from the depths to the surface; this water is cold and nutrient rich. During El Niño, upwelling weakens or stops altogether. Without the nutrients from the deep, there are fewer phytoplankton off the coast. This affects fish that eat phytoplankton and, in turn, affects everything that eats fish. The warmer waters can also bring tropical species, like yellowtail and albacore tuna, into areas that are normally too cold.
As far as the Continental United States is concerned, this means the Northern half of the country will be warmer than usual, the Southern half of the country will be wetter than usual, and the Northeast in particular will be drier than usual.
"El Niño and La Niña reflect the two end points of an oscillation in the Pacific Ocean. The cycle is not fully understood, but the times series illustrates that the cycle swings back and forth every 3-7 years. Often, El Niño is followed immediately by La Niña, as if the warm water is sloshing back and forth across the Pacific. The development of El Niño events is linked to the trade winds. El Niño occurs when the trade winds are weaker than normal, and La Niña occurs when they are stronger than normal. Both cycles typically peak in December.
El Niño and La Niña aren’t the only cycles evident in this image series. The Pacific Ocean is moody: It turns slightly hot or slightly cold every couple of years. This bi-annual pattern isn’t the distinctive, well-defined stripe of warm ocean waters near the equator typical of El Niño, but rather, a general warming of the ocean.
On top of the two-year warm/cold cycle and the El Niño/La Niña pattern is a broader decadal cycle in which the Pacific has a warm and a cool phase. In the 1990s, the Pacific was in a warm phase. The strong El Niño of 1997 marked the end of the warm phase."
For example, the last strong one was 2015-2016.
I think that is debatable:
https://m.facebook.com/photo?fbid=721067186044954&wtsid=rdr_...
While I am not saying to ignore climate change, I do believe that the recent public narrative of a looming „climate catastrophe“ is certainly just to scare people into accepting all kinds of policy changes (and some of them with questionable usefulness).
Climate disaster is looming. Whatever the "public narrative" is beside the point, laws of physics don't care about that.
As the figure tries to convey laws of nature do not matter if human action is able to offset their effects. In the last 100 years climate related deaths plummeted by 10x despite the warming trend we now know about.
And it’s not that surprising, if you take a step back shortly: It’s quintessentially human to withstand natural forces. That behavior have brought humans ever more far away from doom. Human beings have witnessed sea levels 130 meters lower 21000 years ago and have crossed the Bering street to populate North America. So climatic changes have basically been a catalyst to human development and they will remain so for the foreseeable future. Human made climate change is not great but it will certainly not bring doom over our civilization and certainly not over our planet (that has seen much worse if you look back farther into the past).
All this doom and gloom talk will only incite the worst in us.
1) Certain regions, particularly those riding the equatorial line that also have wet seasons will experience (rather, are experiencing right now) extreme wet seasons with heavy flooding , for example in south america, such as Peru, Brazil and COlombia. The wet season causes an extreme cascading effect in those societies by the spike in cases of water-related (mosquito larvae) disease like dengue, cholera and malaria.
2) The same countries will experience drought in the normally quieter, "winter" season. That wrecks agricultural yield. Watch the price of bananas and similar water-intensive perennials , at your local supermarket early next year. For countries near major river flows (amazon in particular) that are not diversified in power sources and heavily dependant in hydro for power , they can get really in trouble and experience brownouts further damaging their GDP. This is rarer since most countries learn their lesson after the 1-brownout in a decade..but you never know.
In California, particularly Southern California, an El Niño winter is more likely wetter than usual. The 1997-1998 winter comes to mind.
These are all statistical predictions based on previous years, and any individual year can vary wildly from average. In addition, climate change makes historical data increasingly irrelevant. So, take any forecast of the weather six months into the future with a grain of salt!
I went to Tahoe for the first time that winter and the snowpack was absolutely absurd. Like 20 feet. The ski area parking lot I went to had a wall of snow carved out next to the cars. I have a sideways panoramic photo taken of myself next to it to remember it by.
I am of the "there's no bad weather only bad clothing" camp, but that much quasi-continuous rain in the winter is a seriously depressing thought. Even the monsoon in SEA only lasts a month or so and it's kinda warm.
I was walking around Upper Haight thinking "hm, it smells like snow". I went into a shop, and emerged 10 minutes later to find it lightly snowing.
Also, I think, the winter where we had a couple thunderstorms.
This isn’t all El Niño, we lost the sunflower starfish which preyed on urchins and kept them in check to a disease, but the warm surface waters are another bad situation on top of low kelp cover, urchins out of control, no predators for the urchins, etc. if we don’t have kelp forests off shore, the environment will be totally different and many species that depend on the kelp will disappear.
The sardine stocks collapsed. Salmon season is cancelled. Abalone will probably never be legally taken again in my lifetime in California.
El Nino is a natural phenomenon, but when the ecosystem is already on the edge because of climate change, ocean acidification, and overfishing it is enough that it might permanently change the ecosystem. I’m explaining that it’s already way out of whack because we killed most of the otters, decimated the sardine run, and then the starfish wasting disease took the last main urchin predator.
[1] "Neutral" brought the atmospheric rivers: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/march-2023-enso-...
[2] Blue Nina, red nino: https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitorin...
El Niño's warmer waters can also push the Pacific jet stream south. When that happens, the NOAA says, "areas in the northern U.S. and Canada are dryer and warmer than usual. But in the U.S. Gulf Coast and Southeast, these periods are wetter than usual and have increased flooding.""
-- https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173734262/el-nino-2023-weath...
* Winter-Spring (June-November): Dryer than usual in eastern Australia, warmer than usual in southern Australia
* Summer-Autumn (December-May): Warmer than usual with average rainfall in eastern Australia, dryer conditions in Cape York and Tasmania, and wetter conditions in the southern part of Western Australia
[1] http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/#tabs=Pacific-Ocean
PS BOM agrees with NOAA that El Niño is coming http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/outlook/#tabs=ENSO-Outloo...
I'm 150km inland, just north of Sydney AU latitude (150E, 33S).
The very averaged annual rainfall in our area is 600mm (about the same as London, about half of Sydney).
In 2021 we had 910mm, and 2022 we had 966mm. So far this year we've had 192mm - and given January is our wettest period, that's way under both long-term average and recent trend.
From: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/el-nino-returns-2023/
Where it should be regularly mid-70s by this time of year, it's stayed around high-50s since January.
Preparing for my trip to London, I was planning for a wetter and colder climate than I'm accustomed to. It turns out it's actually nicer weather in London than in LA right now.
I was confused by the post's title but it appears El Nino is 90% likely to increase temperatures this year from May - Winter. I don't know how different this is from a normal El Nino, nor do I know if 90% is higher or lower than average.