The World Meteorological Organization issued a forecast report on March 1 indicating that "it is possible that [this 2023] an El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event will develop."
The Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States (NOAA, for its acronym in English) has done something very similar with the publication (April 13) of a watch alert for the possibility of appearing a new episode of El Niño in the next six months, with a 62% probability that the start of this cyclical weather-climate phenomenon will occur between May and July. "While we are still in an ENSO-neutral phase, when there is no El Niño or La Niña present, there is a 62% chance that El Niño will develop sometime between May and July. This comes after almost two years La Niña continuums," NOAA details on its website.
NOAA recalls that "El Niño-Southern Oscillation (or ENSO) is a weather pattern defined by sea surface temperature and rainfall deviations from normal in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that can influence weather and climate patterns in the United States and around the world.
"El Niño is the warm phase of ENSO when ocean temperatures are higher and precipitation is higher than normal in the area from the center to the east of the Pacific Ocean," recall the experts from this American scientific entity. "NOAA scientists will continue to monitor the potential development of El Niño and will publish the next monthly update on May 11, 2023," the note from this office stated briefly.
The NOAA Climate Prediction Center blog also published on April 13 a note by the expert Emily Becker expanding on the possible appearance of El Niño. "It's gone very fast. Just two months ago I was writing about La Nina, for what seemed like the 97th month in a row, and then in March, La Nina was gone. Instead, now we're issuing a La Nina Watch alert. El Niño, which means that conditions are favorable for the development of El Niño conditions within the next 6 months. In fact, there is a 62% chance of El Niño conditions for the period from May to July," he reiterates. Becker. Refining a little more, the expert affirms: "There is a 62% probability that El Niño will develop during the period from May to July, and more than 80% probability that El Niño will develop in the fall."
The NOAA expert indicates that they have several indicators that give solidity to their predictions of the appearance of El Niño but that it is much more difficult to forecast the power of this new episode. "Some of the models predict El Niño values of up to 3.4ºC [of temperature increase compared to the average], a quite extraordinary level, but we believe that this prediction is unreliable because the models tend to overestimate the power of the phenomenon, especially in the spring."
"The ENSO team has a method for predicting the strength of an El Niño or La Niña event that combines human forecasts and model predictions. This method has shown promise so far, although we've only been using it for a couple of years. Using that approach, the current probability of a strong El Niño (Niño-3.4 greater than 1.5°C) is about 4 in 10, a clearer picture of potential El Niño strength will develop as we move out of the barrier spring", explains Emily Becker's note in an informative tone.
