Skip to footer

El Niño could linger in Northern Hemisphere into next year

That could mean more rainfall for drought-stricken California next spring.

|
Gene Blevins/REUTERS
Drivers on the 14 Freeway come to stop as monsoon storm cell dumps hail and rain in the high desert area of Los Angeles County, California July 30, 2015.
  • By Reuters

| New York

A US government weather forecaster on Thursday raised the likelihood that El Niño conditions would last into the Northern Hemisphere's early spring to 85 percent, boosting the probability that drought-stricken California could see increased rains.

The Climate Prediction Center, a National Weather Service agency, last month forecast an 80 percent chance that conditions would last through early spring. The CPC still says there is a more than 90 percent chance that El Niño conditions would last through the Northern Hemisphere winter.

The new forecast marginally raises the risk that the El Niño phenomenon, the warming of Pacific sea-surface temperatures, will unleash a period of extreme and potentially damaging weather across the globe.

Past instances have caused heavy rains and floods, hitting grain crops in South America, and scorching weather as far as Asia and East Africa.

But one potential El Niño beneficiary could be California, where record-low rainfall has prompted water usage restrictions and contributed to the spread of devastating wildfires.

"It definitely would increase the likelihood of heavy rains in the winter there, which would certainly improve their situation tremendously," said Donald Keeney, senior agricultural meteorologist with Maryland-based MDA Weather Services.

California could begin to get increased rainfall as early as October and definitely by November or December, Keeney said.

Rainfall will probably not increase in the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington, which are also suffering from droughts, although they could experience higher temperatures like much of the northern United States, Keeney said.

The CPC said the effects of El Niño were likely to remain minimal across the contiguous United States for the rest of the summer but would increase into the late fall and winter.

El Niño would probably contribute to a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season, the CPC said. That would reduce the likelihood of storms disrupting energy operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

However, the agency said El Niño was likely to lead to above-normal hurricane seasons in both the central and Eastern Pacific hurricane basins.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to El Niño could linger in Northern Hemisphere into next year
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2015/0813/El-Nino-could-linger-in-Northern-Hemisphere-into-next-year
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe