El Niño is over, and it will affect the weather worldwide. El Niño is a natural climate pattern with warmer ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. It has been influencing global weather since last summer, especially during the hottest year on record.
Now that El Niño is gone, its opposite, La Niña, will likely become prominent in the coming months. Currently, neither El Niño nor La Niña is active, and we’re in a neutral phase, as per NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. But La Niña is expected to develop quickly during the summer and could be fully established by September, which is peak hurricane season.
Let’s see what changes a summer without El Niño and the emergence of La Niña might bring.
Hot Summer, Busy Atlantic :
In the US, summers after strong El Niño winters have often been really hot, and this summer might be the same, even before La Niña sets in.
Most of the US is expected to have hotter-than-normal temperatures this summer. The West has already started feeling the heat, and now the eastern part of the country is also getting sizzling temperatures.
But the shift to La Niña isn’t the only reason for the heat. The world is getting warmer because of pollution from fossil fuels, so temperatures are generally rising during the summer.
Besides hotter temperatures, forecasts are showing less rain for a big part of the western US. Many states in the West and parts of the Plains are expected to have drier conditions than usual.
When an area gets hotter, it also tends to get drier. This can lead to new or worse droughts. Dry areas heat up more because most of the sun’s energy goes into warming the ground instead of evaporating moisture from wet soil.
The end of El Niño will also have a big impact in the Atlantic Ocean, especially for the hurricane season.
El Niño usually creates strong winds that break apart storms, but La Niña doesn’t. So, without El Niño, more storms could form this year. Also, El Niño usually steers storms away from the US, but this year, without it, the coasts could be more vulnerable.
The warm waters in the Atlantic Ocean could fuel storms, making them stronger and more likely to form.
The oceans are getting warmer globally, partly because of El Niño. La Niña might cool them down a bit eventually, but it will take time. Most of the heat from fossil fuels, which warm the planet, ends up in the oceans, and they don’t cool down quickly.
The Effects of El Niño :
El Niño came in June 2023 and turned out to be one of the strongest ever. It affected the world for a whole year.
One big thing it did was make the air and ocean temperatures reach record highs around the world. CNN said that every month from June 2023 to May 2024 was the hottest ever recorded.
The ocean temperatures started breaking records in March 2023 and have stayed at those high levels ever since.
Even though the records began before El Niño showed up, this warm climate pattern made things even hotter. The record heat in the air made the oceans even warmer.
This natural climate pattern also affected several big weather events since last summer.
El Niño probably played a role in making northern South America hot and dry, leading to record-low levels in the Amazon River in October. It might have contributed to the hottest winter ever in the US Lower 48 and severe droughts in parts of central and southern Africa this winter.
Usually, El Niño brings more rain to Africa’s east coast, but this time, there was too much rain in Kenya in April and May, causing devastating and deadly effects.
During El Niño, California and the western US usually get more rain, especially in the winter. That happened this past winter when several strong atmospheric river events hit the West Coast.
We still need more research to understand all the ways El Niño affected the past 12 months, but these events show how much it can change the weather.