ENSO Blog

The word from NOAA on El Niño came out this morning, and, no surprise, the planet’s most powerful natural climate disrupter got 💪-er in September, pushing up the odds that this event will soon become the 💪-est on record. And while most of El Niño’s impacts on the continental U.S. happen in the winter, one of its most consistent impacts will be felt sooner in California: high-tide flooding. In this week’s post, I’ll give you a quick rundown on current conditions and highlight a web app that you can use to view the high-tide flood outlook for your location.  What’s going on in the ocean? Surface water temperatures in parts of the eastern tropical Pacific averaged 5 degrees Celsius ab…   Read article

Here we are, a few days past the average peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, and we’ve heard barely a peep, with just six named storms (average is 10 by now) and zero hurricanes. Take a look at the Pacific, though, and it’s a different story—17 named storms, versus an average of about 13. Another way of looking at it is to use accumulated cyclone energy (ACE), a measurement of how strong and long-lasting storm winds have been. ACE shows an even more dramatic difference between the Pacific and the Atlantic this year. Here at the ENSO Blog, we’ve covered the relationship between ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation, the whole El Niño and La Niña system) and hurricanes several times befor…   Read article

NOAA’s El Niño forecast is out today, and it will be no surprise to anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention that…El Niño is getting stronger, there’s a 100 percent chance that it will continue through at least the December–February season, and the odds of it becoming the strongest event on record by the October-December season (as ranked by the 3-month average Relative Oceanic Niño Index) are now 75 percent. In a minute, I’ll walk you through a photo dump of key El Niño graphics that explain what’s going on in the tropical Pacific Ocean and why forecasters are so confident in their outlook. But in case you’re new here, and what you’re really wondering is why everyone…   Read article

If you’re reading this, you have surely seen recent predictions that El Niño could break all kinds of records this year, ending up stronger—some say much stronger—than any previous El Niño on record. While a very strong El Niño is essentially a certainty—NOAA recently predicted a 69% chance of an event exceeding any other in our 75-year record—there’s nuance to the story.A stronger El Niño means we are more likely to see expected El Niño impacts, providing a picture of what upcoming seasons may bring, so it’s important to be able to accurately measure El Niño strength. With climate change involved, however, we need a way to isolate the strength of El Niño itself.Measure for measureEl Niño’s …   Read article

The second Thursday of each month is ENSO-forecast day at NOAA, the day that the agency weighs in on whether ENSO—short for El Niño-Southern Oscillation—is currently warm (El Niño), cool (La Niña), or neutral, and how likely it is to stay that way in coming months. It’s a big day because ENSO is a big deal, the single most influential natural climate phenomenon on Earth. By disrupting normal ocean temperature and rainfall in the tropical Pacific for months on end, El Niño and La Niña interrupt the general flow of the atmosphere around the planet, setting the stage for drought in some places and deluge in others. As expected, NOAA released its latest update on El Niño earlier this mornin…   Read article