The Australian Bureau of Meteorology was the first government agency to announce the arrival of the strong El Niño which has affected global climate this past winter. Now they have declared that the El Niño is over due to their observations of declining ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean, where the signal is strongest. In the next few weeks this declaration is likely to be echoed by other agencies like NOAA, once their equivalent data come in and are evaluated.
So what’s next? Neutral conditions are expected to last the next few months before the oceans swing to the opposite phase, La Niña, later this summer. Neutral conditions generally come with a higher chance of tropical storms and a more active season in the Atlantic (less active in the eastern Pacific). We are also likely to see warmer and drier than normal conditions late in this year and on into winter across the Southeast.
You can read more about it at the Sydney Morning Herald here.
