ENSO Blog

This is a guest post by Hannah Bao, a recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Department. Hannah is currently enrolled in UMD’s Data Science M.S. program. She developed this piece based on a longer research paper she did for a class.  El Niño and La Niña (collectively, ENSO, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation) affect global rain/snow and temperature patterns, making certain outcomes more likely in some regions. For example, winters with La Niña—cooler-than-average surface waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific—tend to be drier than average along the southern third of the U.S. While this is certainly not always the case, ENSO still giv…   Read article

You’ll have to excuse this ENSO Blogger for a minute while I drink some sweet tea on the porch and lament about all the heat and humidity, “Woof, it’s hot!” Things truly seem to move slower during the dog days of summer in late July and early August. And it seems like the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean that can affect weather across the world, is no exception. The expected transition from ENSO-Neutral to La Niña continues to proceed slowly, as if the whole Pacific is stuck in a summer daze, moving as slow as molasses. According to the August ENSO outlook, ENSO-Neutral conditions remain across the Pacific, with La Niña favored to develo…   Read article

This is a guest post by Dr. Derek Lemoine, who is APS Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Sarah Kapnick, currently the NOAA Chief Scientist, collaborated with Dr. Lemoine on NOAA CPO-funded research while at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. As regular readers of the ENSO blog know, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issues forecasts of the large-scale climate patterns that we may see many months later. But they may not know that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Outlook is but one of the seasonal climate outlooks that NOAA pr…   Read article

El Niño’s term is over, and La Niña is favored for the school year (79% chance for November–January). Our neutral summer break is well underway, so let’s pack our bags and hit the road. Summer school A quick primer for our newer visitors: El Niño and La Niña are opposite phases of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern that changes global atmospheric circulation. El Niño’s signature is warmer-than-average surface water in the eastern and central tropical Pacific, while La Niña is cooler than average. Since they can be predicted many months in advance, and change global climate patterns in known ways, we can get an idea of potential upcoming temperature, rain, drough…   Read article

This is a guest post by Matthew Rosencrans, who is the lead hurricane season forecaster at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center. Spring has turned to summer, which means that allergies have mostly let go of their hold over our collective sinuses (apologies to those still suffering), sunscreen lathering is again a daily ritual, and many people grab their chairs and blankets and head to the beach. However, this is also when trouble can start brewing in the tropics, and so at this same time every year, forecasters across NOAA (1) turn their attention to the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season. Each May, NOAA issues their Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook for the number of tropical sto…   Read article