Forecasters predict an El Niño climate pattern will dominate global weather starting this summer — with some calling for what could be a “super” El Niño.
El Niño is part of a cycle in which waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean become warmer than average. Sea surface temperatures in the region where El Niño forms are expected to be 2.5 degrees Celsius above normal.
Meteorologists say anything more than 2 degrees could be considered a “super” El Niño. Only one El Niño in the past five decades has been stronger than what’s forecast for this fall.
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El Niño patterns typically occur every three to seven years. When the next one arrives, forecasters expect record heat. The most recent El Niño developed in late 2023 and early 2024.
Historically, El Niño brings wetter conditions to the southern United States but drier weather to the North. It also tends to produce milder winters across much of the country.
One potential benefit: El Niño can suppress hurricane activity because strong upper-level winds disrupt developing storms.
Yale climatologists Jeff Masters and Bob Henson wrote that, based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s forecast released Monday, the world should prepare for an unusually strong El Niño.
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Even if El Niño forms, they said the effects are unlikely to show up in North American weather patterns until after summer.
“The problem is that most of the seasonal effects in North America from a building El Niño or La Niña event don’t kick in till after summer,” they wrote. “This is largely because the atmospheric reverberations from El Niño-Southern Oscillation’s home base in the eastern tropical Pacific are more powerful when they play off against the stronger jet stream that sets up in fall and winter.”
