Kiss Goodbye To La Niña And Say Hello To Her Equally Frustrating Brother El Niño
Just when you got used to blaming La Niña for all of your problems, experts are now predicting that the weather will soon begin to invoke her dry sarcastic brother, El Niño.
According to a new prediction from Weatherzone, we will likely remain in La Niña weather for the next three months before pivoting to El Niño in April.
“The graph shows that La Niña has a 90 percent likelihood of remaining in place over the next three months,” Weatherzone said.
“Further into the future, this outlook suggests that El Niño becomes the most likely state for the Pacific Ocean late in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter in 2023.”
So What Does The BOM Have To Say About El Niño?
However, it’s worth noting that the predictions are based on US forecasting, which is different to how BOM, uhh, I mean The Bureau do things over here in Australia.
The news comes after BOM predicted that La Niña would end in early 2023, which is pretty close to the Weatherzone prediction.
For those unfamiliar with weather patterns, an El Niño event happens when sea surface temperatures are warmer than normal.
“An El Niño occurs when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become substantially warmer than average, and this causes a shift in atmospheric circulation. Typically, the equatorial trade winds blow from east to west across the Pacific Ocean. El Niño events are associated with a weakening, or even reversal, of the prevailing trade winds,” the BoM website reads.
Warming of ocean temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific causes this area to become more conducive to tropical rainfall and cloud development. As a result, the heavy rainfall that usually occurs to the north of Australia moves to the central and eastern parts of the Pacific basin.
Unfortunately, this means that on top of the current threat of flooding, experts are warning people to start stressing about the potential of a drought.
“Extreme events are going to keep happening, we need to start thinking about the next drought,” CSIRO climate science centre research director Dr Jaci Brown told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s hard to imagine right now, but that is Australia’s climate.”
“It’s variable and we need to think about our water management into the next few years as we move inevitably to El Niño after La Niña.”
This post was originally published on Junkee.
