Nino

Difference from normal rainfall during October 2023, showing defined wet area around Gippsland, Victoria surrounded by drier conditions. Credit: The Bureau of Meteorology You've probably heard El Niño brings hot and dry weather to the eastern states, but what about the rest of Australia? Are we all in for a scorcher this summer? El Niño is what…

Sea surface temperatures are unusually high around southern Australia as well as in the central and eastern tropical Pacific where the El Niño event is continuing. Credit: Bureau of Meteorology, CC BY-ND After three La Niña summers many of us would have been expecting much hotter and drier conditions this spring and summer after the arrival of El Niño. Instead, in many parts of eastern Australia it's rained and rained over the…

El Niño is making its return after a nearly eight-year hiatus, and forecasters say it could impact winter weather on the Prairies.The climate pattern happens when the temperature of Pacific Ocean waters along the equator off the coast of Peru rises above normal.The air above that water then warms and moves northward.In Western Canada, this intrusion of warmer air can change the overall pattern of the polar jet stream — a narrow band of fast-moving air that separates colder weather to the north from milder weather to the…

A TAO buoy, part of a system collecting temperature, salinity, velocity, and surface meteorological data that inform climate predictions of ENSO, is lowered into the ocean. Credit: Lt. Cdr. Matthew Wingate, NOAA Corps, CC BY 2.0 The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—the climate phenomenon comprising the warm El Niño, cool La Niña, and neutral climate phases—occurs on a cycle that lasts 2–7 years. When it forms, ENSO drives…

The areas of the regarded sea surface temperature anomalies. Credit: npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41612-023-00519-8 At irregular intervals, a momentous weather phenomenon called El Niño (Spanish for "Christ Child") occurs in the Pacific. The warm surface water initially driven by the trade winds towards the coasts of Indonesia and eastern Australia then sloshes back eastwards, which can have…

An unusually high tide, called a King Tide, floods a highway on-ramp in Northern California in January 2023. Sea level rise and El Niños can exacerbate this type of flooding. Credit: California King Tides Project An analysis by NASA's sea level change science team finds that if a strong El Niño develops this winter, cities along the western coasts of the Americas could see an increase in the frequency of high-tide flooding…

South African jazz has taken a maximal turn in recent years. Artists such as the collective Spaza and drummers Tumi Mogorosi and Asher Gamedze have each released records that channel free jazz to produce a collective cacophony of sound. It is a social statement as much as a sonic one, an effort to connect with a sense of Black community consciousness through the emotive openness of improvisation.Thandi Ntuli with Carlos Niño: Rainbow Revisited album artwork. Photograph: Shabaka HutchingsPianist and vocalist Thandi Ntuli…

Antarctica Scientific Expedition in 2019. Credit: Shuanglin LI The precipitation in West Antarctica, especially around the Antarctic Peninsula, exhibits large variability on the interannual time scale. In recent years, scientific research activities, tourism and fisheries have been experiencing remarkable growth there. Thus, understanding the variability of precipitation in West Antarctica, including the Antarctic Peninsula,…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain In a recently published study, researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model using deep learning algorithms that outperforms traditional dynamic models in predicting the development and pattern of El Niño events in the central Pacific Ocean. …

It was long anticipated, and now it's here. The global weather pattern El Niño has returned for the first time in seven years, according to the World Meteorological Organization, setting the stage for further extreme weather and soaring temperatures.The United Nations agency made the declaration on Tuesday, after months of forecasting that suggested the weather pattern was likely to return."The onset of El Niño will greatly increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records and triggering more extreme heat in many…