{"id":5889,"date":"2016-01-28T23:04:05","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T04:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=5889"},"modified":"2016-01-28T23:04:43","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T04:04:43","slug":"el-nino-update-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2016\/01\/el-nino-update-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Has El Ni\u00f1o peaked?"},"content":{"rendered":"

El Ni\u00f1o has been strongly affecting the climate of the Southeast for the past few months, leading to our current wet conditions. \u00a0While temperatures in December were much warmer than expected for an El Ni\u00f1o winter, since then the Southeast has cooled down to more normal values. \u00a0Cloudiness this year has also been an issue as the storms move through the region every three or four days.<\/p>\n

Normally this time of the winter is when the peak of\u00a0El Ni\u00f1o occurs. \u00a0Climatologists have been watching to see when it starts its inevitable decay. \u00a0EarthSky posted a story online yesterday discussing the current status of El Ni\u00f1o here<\/a>. \u00a0They point out that even though the peak warming of El Ni\u00f1o has appeared to come and go, a second peak is certainly possible and that there will be plenty of El Ni\u00f1o conditions still to come, even if it begins to decay.<\/p>\n

However, the latest forecasts for El Ni\u00f1o from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at Columbia University show that the likelihood of a rapid switch\u00a0from El Ni\u00f1o to La Ni\u00f1a once it does decay has accelerated in the last two weeks. \u00a0Where scientists were originally expecting a slower transition from one to the other, the latest models now indicate that the transition could be relatively quick and by late summer La Ni\u00f1a could already be established. \u00a0This was discussed in an AgWeb article here<\/a> earlier this week.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for the coming summer? \u00a0Jim Angel, the Illinois State Climatologist, discussed this in his blog<\/a> today. \u00a0While many\u00a0of his remarks are aimed at the Midwest, the general discussion shows that drought is more likely in both the Midwest and the Southeast this coming summer, especially later in the season when La Ni\u00f1a is likely to be more dominant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"nino34<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\"plume<\/a><\/p>\n

\"iri<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

El Ni\u00f1o has been strongly affecting the climate of the Southeast for the past few months, leading to our current wet conditions. \u00a0While temperatures in December were much warmer than expected for an El Ni\u00f1o winter, since then the Southeast has cooled down to more normal values. \u00a0Cloudiness this year has also been an issue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":5891,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,15,22,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-climate-outlooks","category-drought","category-el-nino-and-la-nina","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5896,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889\/revisions\/5896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}