The “Spring Predictability Barrier” is well known to climatologists as the difficulty we have in predicting whether an El Nino will occur in the coming months in springtime compared to other times of the year.  This is due to the seasonality of El Nino, which is usually strongest around Christmas (hence the name “El Nino”, as it often comes around the time of the coming of the Christ Child).

We usually have a reasonable chance of getting a good forecast of El Nino in late summer into early fall.  But predicting what will happen to an El Nino is spring is much tougher. Climate.gov has a good blog posting this week explaining some of the problems with these spring El Nino forecasts at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/spring-predictability-barrier-we%E2%80%99d-rather-be-spring-break.

Since El Nino signals are so strong in the Southeast, improved forecasts would help farmers plan for known variations in temperature and precipitation based on whether an El Nino is likely or not, but as this article shows, there may be a limit to how good those forecasts can be at certain times of year.

Source: NOAA Climate.gov
Source: NOAA Climate.gov