A La Niña global cooling event is on the horizon

Earth’s climate is having a David Bowie moment – going through some ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

The ongoing global warming event known as El Niño will likely transition into its opposite event, La Niña, sometime during the upcoming months, per new data from the National Weather Service.

Background: El Niño and La Niña are opposing terms used to describe the natural climate cycle that occurs in the Pacific Ocean, where water surface temperatures shift between significantly hotter than average (El Niño) and significantly colder than average (La Niña) every few years.

Both weather events have a major impact on US climate systems. La Niña is associated with colder/wetter conditions in the North and warmer/drier conditions across the South, while El Niño’s effect is the exact opposite.

• La Niña also contributes to slightly cooler global temperatures, and increases the risk of an unusually dangerous Atlantic hurricane season.
• On the flip side, El Niño boosts global temperatures and suppresses Atlantic hurricane activity.

👀 Looking ahead… According to the National Weather Services’ updated outlook, there’s an 83% chance that the ongoing El Niño event will fade away into neutral temperature conditions between April and June of this year, and an 82% chance that a La Niña cooling event will emerge to replace it by the end of October.