La Niña ends after 3 weak months, leaving Earth in neutral climate state
Jean Chatelier walks through a flooded street from Hurricane Irma after retrieving his uniform from his house to return to work today at a supermarket in Fort Myers, Fla., Sept. 12, 2017. FILE PHOTO/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — See you later La Niña, we hardly knew you.
La Niña, the natural cooling flip side of the better known and warmer El Niño climate phenomenon, has dwindled away after just three months. The La Niña that appeared in January, months later than forecast, was a weak one, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.
Earth is now in a neutral setting in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle, which is generally the most benign of the three states that help influence hurricane formation, droughts, floods, and global temperatures. NOAA forecasts the neutral setting to last most if not all of 2025. That makes longer-term weather forecasts a bit trickier because one of the major factors is not pushing one way or the other.
READ: Cooling La Niña expected to be ‘short-lived’ – UN
La Niña is an irregular rising of unusually cold water in a key part of the central equatorial Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide. It typically brings more Atlantic hurricanes in the summer, but it won’t be a factor this year. In the United States, La Niñas tend to cause drier weather in the South and West and often make it wetter in parts of Indonesia, northern Australia, and southern Africa.
Studies have found that La Niñas tend to be costlier than El Niños and neutral conditions.
Before this three-month La Niña, the world had an unusually long three-year La Niña that ended in 2023.
