Blogs

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

The Pacific Ocean has hit pause and settled into ENSO-neutral conditions, which are expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere summer. This makes seasonal forecasting for upcoming global rain, temperature, and other patterns a bit trickier. The odds of La Niña increase through the fall but remain lower than the odds of neutral. By the November–January period, there’s a 48% chance of neutral and a 41% chance of La Niña, with El Niño a distant third. Grab your towel, today we’re touring the galaxy of ENSO-neutral and what it means for seasonal prediction. The story so far: what ENSO is, and why it matters El Niño and La Niña, known collectively as the El Niño/Southern Oscill…   Read article

This is a guest post by Prof. Kelsey Malloy, with the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. She specializes in diagnosing the influence of climate on severe convective storm risk. She is also an accomplished blogger at Seasoned Chaos, which focuses on subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasting. ***** On your mark, get set, go! The 2025 U.S. severe weather season is off to a formidable start. Preliminary storm report data from Storm Prediction Center (SPC) suggest a well above-average February through April, especially for tornado activity, which has tragically resulted in 35 deaths [footnote 1]. What goes into such an active tornado season? As the blog ha…   Read article

The tropical Pacific is in ENSO-neutral conditions, and neutral is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere summer. Neutral is also the most likely outcome for the fall and winter, although chances of La Niña are a close second. Today, as your trusty representative of the ENSO forecast team, I’ll cover current conditions in the tropical Pacific, what we mean by neutral, and what it means for seasonal climate prediction… with a side of Macbeth (footnote 1). The ENSO cauldron First, let’s set the stage for why we care so much about El Niño and La Niña, the natural climate pattern collectively known as ENSO, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. El Niño and La Niña change global a…   Read article

Put any meteorologist or scientist on the spot and ask them to define the climate in 10 seconds or less, they will blurt out some variation of “climate is the average of weather” (I’m guilty of this!). And, while it’s true in a narrow sense, it doesn’t provide a complete picture. We can’t expect to fully understand—much less predict—a location’s climate just by averaging its day-to-day weather. Let me explain by comparing the climates of Washington, D.C. and the Galapagos Islands. In Washington, D.C., we are in the midst of spring. The tulips are out, the trees and grass are bright green, the pollen is smothering, and while there are still a few crisp, cool mornings, everyone knows wi…   Read article