Enjoy the rain in Hawai`i the last couple of months, because
there’s some evidence that later this year we could face the opposite: unusually
dry conditions.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhKVy-69xj3KzuMxyih2Zx2B2sU4bvY-G1so3UQOzIVbtvojZk9W1hi2e5pMaciKYoPsMPkwnDQkz0E0EDwTS9WANX8LxwgcmAs38K7E3aFZcNUiGo7RsSOPIrya5JvcXI7L7i5Kfu2Pw/s1600/sm_elnino97.gif)
(Image: Noaa water temperature chart from the extreme El
Nino event of 1997. Credit: NOAA.)
In its Feb. 6, 2014, El Nino diagnostic discussion, U.S.
Climate Prediction Center said that after the spring, there appears an
increasing likelihood of a new El Nino event.
While warning that El Nino forecasts are notoriously hazy in
the spring, the CPC says “an increasing number of models suggest the possible
onset of El Niño. Strong surface westerly winds in the western Pacific and the
slight eastward shift of above-average temperatures in the subsurface western
Pacific potentially portend warming in the coming months.”
The CPC report follows on the heels of a similar prediction January30, 2013, by the World Meteorological Organization.
The WMO cited models that predicted Nino-neutral conditions
through the spring, and chances of continued neutral conditions or a weak El
Nino in the third quarter of the year.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology chimed in even earlier,
on January 28, 2014, with great caution, but a suggestion that neutral
conditions could remain in place into the fall, but that El Nino warming could
ease into place toward the end of the year.
“Most climate models surveyed by the Bureau suggest the
tropical Pacific Ocean will warm through the southern autumn and winter. Some,
but not all, models predict this warming may approach El Niño thresholds by
early winter. Model outlooks that span autumn have lower skill than forecasts
made at other times of the year, hence long-range model outlooks should be used
cautiously at this time,” the Australian service reported.
Thus far, none of the prediction services are proposing that
the El Nino, if it comes, will be a strong one. But they sometimes are, and one
group of researchers suggests we’ll be seeing more of those.
It was 15 years between an extremely strong El Nino in the
80s and the one in the late 90s, and it’s been a similar period of time from
then till now. A paper in the journal Nature Climate Change notes that extreme
El Ninos occurred in 1982-83 and again in 1997-98.
That paper suggests we could be seeing more of those in the
future, thanks to climate change. In fact, we could see twice as many extreme
El Nino events as we see now, the authors argue.
“The increased frequency arises from a projected surface
warming over the eastern equatorial Pacific that occurs faster than in the
surrounding ocean waters, facilitating more occurrences of atmospheric
convection in the eastern equatorial region,” they write.
© Jan TenBruggencate 2014
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