After three years of La Niña (¹) in the tropical Pacific Ocean (mid-2020 to mid-2023) having brought a fairly calm weather situation on Polynesia : regular trade winds, lack of hurricane, mainly dry weather, this idyllic situation will be reversed with the announced return (²) of the El Niño phase of the ENSO climate phenomenon(El Niño Southern Oscillation). Finally, idyllic, it wasn't for Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Melanesia and western Australia, which experienced much higher than normal intense rainfall and increased hurricanes during the same period.
La Niña to El Niño
WMO has published in its newsletter of the 3 May :
According to WMO’s State of the Global Climate reports, based on expert advice and input from WMO global long-range forecasting centres, It is likely to 60 % neutral ENSO conditions give way to an El Niño episode between May and July, and this probability increases to about 70 % between June and August and 80 % between July and September."
ECMWF also published a similar forecast in one of its recent bulletins. :
I am not going to give you a lecture on this phenomenon and its consequences on the global climate (³). You will find by links at the end of the article much more expert explanations than I can provide.
The main purpose of this article is to alert sailors who wish to travel to French Polynesia by 2024 that they could experience a serious increase in the risk of tropical storms and cyclones, heavy rainfall, erratic or even inverted trade winds. It is therefore necessary to closely monitor the information concerning the evolution of the phenomenon in the coming months. (⁴), by referring to the organizations' newsletters links below and all other means of weather forecasting.
Influence on seasonal cyclone activity
Given the uncertainties related to the global climate impacts of ENSO, It can be seen that :
The hurricane impacts of El Niño and its counterpart La Niña are like a see-saw between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, strengthening hurricane activity in one region while weakening it in the other. Simply put, El Niño favors stronger hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific basins and suppresses it in the Atlantic basin – Dr Gerry Bell, NOAA (⁵)
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Useful links and sources :
(¹) El Niño and La Niña (Meteo France)
(²) WMO Bulletin 3 May 2023 (World Meteorological Organization)
(³) La Niña : What effects on the global climate (Meteo France)
(⁴) WMO : info Niño/Niña
(⁵) Impacts of El Niño and La Niña on the hurricane season (NOAA Climate.Gov)
For English speakers :
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Thank you and what about the Caribbean zone ?
I have added an addendum to this article in order to answer this question succinctly..
Thank you Mr. Fustier, for this very interesting post and related links.
Cordially
Thank you for this important climate alert. Nothing planned for the northern hemisphere ?