Australia’s Met: El Nino has ended, not sure about La Nina

CANBERRA: An El Nino weather event has ended, Australian weather authorities said on Tuesday, adding that they were uncertain if a La Nina phenomenon would form later this year, as other forecasters have predicted. The cycle between the two is hugely important for farmers worldwide. El Nino generally brings hotter, drier weather to eastern Australia and Southeast Asia and wetter conditions to the Americas, while a La Nina has the opposite effect.

“El Nino has ended,” Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said, after the weather phenomenon had formed in the middle of last year following three years of La Nina.

Warmer sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific cause El Nino and cooler temperatures lead to La Nina, which a US government weather forecaster this month gave a 60% chance of emerging in the second half of 2024.

The sea surface has been cooling since December and oceanic and atmospheric indicators now show the El Nino Southern Oscillation has returned to neutral, the Australian weather bureau added.

“Climate models indicate ENSO will likely continue to be neutral until at least July 2024,” it said, using the formal name, the El Nino Southern Oscillation, that describes the switch between the two phases.

While some climate models predict a flip to La Nina later this year, the bureau said it was uncertain whether this would happen and urged caution about such forecasts.

Global sea level jumped due to El Nino: Nasa

Global average sea level rose by about 0.76 centimetres from 2022 to 2023 — nearly four times the increase of the previous year — Nasa said in March, attributing the “significant jump” to a strong El Nino and a warming climate.

The Nasa-led analysis is based on more than 30 years of satellite observations, with the initial satellite launching in 1992 and the latest in 2020.

Overall, sea levels have risen by around four inches since 1993. The rate of increase has also accelerated, over doubling from 0.07 inches per year in 1993, to the current rate of 0.17 inches per year.

That would be double the amount of change in the next three decades compared to the previous century, she said, creating a future where flooding is far more frequent and catastrophic than today.

The immediate cause of the spike is the El Nino weather effect, which replaced the La Nina from 2021 to 2022, when the sea level rose around 0.08 inches.

El Nino involves warmerthan-average ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.