El Niño, La Niña by year-end unlikely – PAGASA Cebu

MACTAN, Cebu – The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) in Mactan, Cebu on Saturday dispelled predictions of a recurrence of the El Niño phenomenon as the current concensus result of its climate prediction models point to a likely neutral condition in the remaining four months this year.

“Most, if not, all, favored to neutral with different percentage of probability, based on concensus and PAGASA’s model result,” said PAGASA-Cebu officer in charge Engr. Alfredo Quiblat.

Neutral means the absence of both El Niño and La Niña conditions.

He added that the analysis of more or less 20 climate prediction models of other international prediction centers across the globe also suggests that El Niño/Southern Oscillation has continually remained to be in “neutral” conditions as observed in the region 3.4 of the area between central and eastern tropical Pacific ocean.

The area, he said, had been identified as the “best” indicator in accordance with historical data for previous occurrences of the phenomena.

Early this year, PAGASA and other international weather organizations predicted that a weak El Niño might develop before the year ends.

According to the state weather bureau, El Niño is a “large scale oceanographic/meteorological phenomenon that develops in the Pacific Ocean and is associated with extreme climatic variability” such as devastating rains, winds or drought.

It can prevail for more than a year, thus, “adversely affecting the economy in both local and global scale,” PAGASA added.

In the country, the occurrence of El Niño is associated with drought or dry spell events.

In late 2015 to June 2016, the country was gripped by a severe El Niño episode, which adversely affetced crop production.