Image: NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced its latest update for El Niño and it includes a new curveball. The administration now says there is a “greater than 90 percent” probability that the weather event will last through the upcoming Northern Hemisphere winter, pushing this all well into 2024.
While that sounds like another “buckle up” type of prediction from the NOAA, the administration didn’t exactly stress that this duration of El Niño will somehow equate to any more intense or adverse conditions as a result. Earlier in the year, they did say the earlier-than-expected development of El Niño would give it a chance to build in strength. But the most recent monthly outlook based on models and current atmospheric and ocean temperature data — a 32-page power point presentation — didn’t draw that conclusion for us all. We’re still in a “let’s wait and see” pattern as far as that goes.
“We expect El Niño to continue into the winter, and the odds of it becoming a strong event at its peak are pretty good, at 56 percent. Chances of at least a moderate event are about 84 percent,” they said back in June. That peak is expected to come sometime between November and January, which straddles the transition from fall to winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
“We estimate about an 80 percent chance that this El Niño will peak with a maximum Niño-3.4 Index of at least 1.0 °C, a 50 percent chance of at least 1.5 °C, and a 20 percent chance of above 2.0 °C,” they say now, giving an 81 percent chance this all develops to a “moderate-to-strong intensity.” So those early predictions of a historically-strong El Niño are still constantly evolving but seem less likely at this point, with forecasters giving about a one in five chance we see an El Niño as strong as the 1997-1998 and 2015-2016 winters.
