The latest El Niño discussion was released today. Many of us were expecting that the Climate Prediction Center might finally call this an El Niño event and not just a watch, but today’s discussion makes it clear that we are not quite there yet. While the ocean temperatures match what we expect from an El Niño event, the atmosphere has not quite matched up its circulation pattern to the ocean temperatures, so the watch continues. The prediction gives us at least a 90 percent chance of an El Niño this winter, and in fact the rainfall we’ve been seeing this fall looks a lot like what I would expect in an El Niño winter, so even if we never quite make it there, it’s going to look a lot like El Niño this season. Most predictions indicate that it will be a weak to moderate event. You can read the latest discussion at https://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.pdf.
