El Niño is nearing historic strength. What this means and when it will end.
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Climate models suggest it is more likely than not that El Niño conditions dissipate by June, returning the Pacific to what are called neutral conditions — the absence of El Niño and its foil, La Niña — according to analysis published Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.
What happens next is anyone’s guess, said Andrew Kruczkiewicz, a senior researcher at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
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Those events are remembered for devastating floods, droughts and wildfires around the world. The most recent extreme El Niño pushed the planet to what were then record-high annual average temperatures in 2016. A record-warm 2023 is already certain to break that record, and some climate scientists are suggesting it could be pushed even higher in 2024.
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By late summer, the chances of neutral conditions and of a budding La Niña appear about even, according to NOAA, with both estimated at between 40 percent and 50 percent. La Niña is known for cooler-than-normal waters across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific and is associated with intense Atlantic hurricane seasons, mild and dry U.S. winters and wet conditions in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Australia.
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