EL NINO OR BUST
El Niño or BustEL
El Niño or Bust
El Niño or Bust
El Niño or Bust
El Niño or Bust
By Michelle L’Heureux,
NOAA Climate Prediction Center
(RealClimate) – Much media attention has been directed at the possibility of an El Niño brewing this year. Many outlets have drawn comparison with the 1997-98 super El Niño. So, what are the odds that El Niño will occur? And if it does, how strong will it be?
To track El Niño, meteorologists at the NOAA/NWS Climate Prediction Center (CPC) release weekly and monthly updates on the status of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society partner with us on the monthly ENSO release and are also collaborators on a brand new “ENSO blog” which is part of www.climate.gov (co-sponsored by the NOAA Climate Programs Office).
Blogging ENSO is a first for operational ENSO forecasters, and we hope that it gives us another way to both inform and interact with our users on ENSO predictions and impacts. In addition, we will collaborate with other scientists to profile interesting ENSO research and delve into the societal
dimensions of ENSO.
As far back as November 2013, the
CPC and the IRI have predicted an elevated chance of El Niño (relative
to historical chance or climatology) based on a combination of model
predictions and general trends over the tropical Pacific Ocean. Once the
chance of El Niño reached 50% in March 2014, an El Niño Watch was issued to alert the public that conditions are more favorable for the development of El Niño.Read More
