With a cooling La Niña gone, media will go into “Global Warming Overdrive” as El Niño hits.
11 hours ago Anthony Watts 27 Comments
March 2023 ENSO update: no more La Niña!
BY EMILY BECKER – originally published on NOAA’s Climate.gov
La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern—has left the building! After a year and half of non-stop La Niña, the tropical Pacific ocean-atmosphere system has transitioned to neutral, allowing NOAA to issue its “Final La Niña Advisory”. What can we expect for ENSO through the summer and into next fall and winter? I’ll get to that!
Get outta town
First, though, let’s bid La Niña adieu. The most recent weekly measurement of the sea surface temperature in the Niño-3.4 region (our primary monitoring region for La Niña and El Niño) was a mere -0.2°C (-0.4˚ F) compared to the long-term average. (To calculate a change in temperature in degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit, multiply by 1.8.) Also, the latest monthly value from the OISSTv2.1 dataset was -0.4°C (-0.7˚ F) for this same region. The threshold for La Niña is cooler than -0.5 °C, so we can say the ocean surface has moved away from La Niña.
animation showing sea surface temperature in the tropical Pacific
The atmosphere is a little more complicated, as it tends to be! We still see some indications of a La Niña-like strengthened Walker circulation, with more rain and clouds than average over Indonesia, less over the central Pacific, and enhanced trade winds. However, without the cooler sea surface characteristic of La Niña, it’s likely this pattern will diminish in the coming weeks.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/09/with-a-cooling-la-nina-gone-media-will-go-into-global-warming-overdrive-as-el-nino-hits/
