The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that after three years of climate instability, the La Nina weather phenomenon – which increased the activity of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and exacerbated droughts in the West – disappearing.
This is usually good news for the United States and other parts of the world, including drought-stricken northeast Africa, scientists say.
Climate scientist Michelle L’Heureux, head of NOAA’s EI Nino/La Nina forecasting office, said La Nina is slowly disappearing, with the world currently in a “neutral” situation. “ and tends to occur during the late summer or autumn El Niño events.
La Nina is slowly disappearing, the world is currently in a state of being considered “neutral”. (Picture: AP).
Through a number of studies, experts believe that the La Nina phenomenon changes climate around the world. In the United States, La Nina increases the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, causing droughts and wildfires to be more severe than in the West, resulting in more damage and costs. Overall, American agriculture is more damaged by La Nina than El Nino.
Michael Ferrari, chief scientific officer of Climate Alpha, a firm that advises investors on climate-based financial decisions, said if the world were impacted by El Niño, there would be more rain for the future. corn and grain belts in the Midwest and can benefit crops.
According to NOAA economist and meteorologist Adam Smith, the US has recorded 14 hurricanes and tropical storms, causing damage of billion or more with a total cost of 2 billion over the past three years. La Nina phenomenon and human impact factors have more or less affected the climate.
” Climate change is a major factor in making extreme weather worse for La Nina ,” the scientists said.
Events that cause extreme weather
According to Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Victor Gensini of Northern Illinois University, human-caused global warming causes temperatures to rise and become more extreme. Some scientists say that if the La Nina phenomenon slightly lowers the average global temperature, the El Nino will slightly increase the global temperature. La Nina tends to make West Africa wet, but in East Africa, around Somalia, it is dry.
Ms Ehsan said the opposite happened in El Nino, which caused drought in Somalia but also produced steady “short rains” . According to NOAA, La Nina creates wetter conditions for Indonesia and parts of Australia and the Amazon, but these areas are drier during El Nino.
Ehsan explains that El Nino causes more heat waves in India or Pakistan as well as other parts of South Asia. Meanwhile, La Nina – started appearing in September 2020 and caused influence in the past 3 years. This phenomenon once paused briefly in 2021 but has returned more vigorously than last time.
“I am sick of this La Nina phenomenon,” Ms. Ehsan said.
Although the La Nina phenomenon has puzzled scientists in the past, they have gradually become accustomed to studying its effects and also El Nino.
According to L’Heureux, the La Nina or El Nino phenomenon is like something that pushes the weather system out of the Pacific Ocean with ripple effects around the world. When there are neutral conditions like now, there will be less thrust from the Pacific. That means other climate factors, including long-term warming trends, will more influence day-to-day weather.
Ms. L’Heureux said El Niño forecasts made in the spring are often less reliable than those made at other times of the year. So scientists are less certain about what will happen next. But NOAA’s forecast states there’s a 60% chance El Nino will happen next fall, but a 5% chance La Nina will return.