“Super El Niño” likely this winter, NCAR experimental prediction system says

Current El Niño conditions that began a couple months early this year could develop into one of the strongest events on record this winter, according to an experimental research prediction system from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research.

If the forecast system is right, this El Niño would be comparable to the major El Niño of 1997 and 1998.

“Our forecast system has shown that it can do a remarkably good job of accurately hindcasting past El Niño events when we’ve tested it using historical data, which gives us high confidence in this forecast,” NCAR scientist Stephen Yeager, who helped lead the modeling effort, said in a news release.

El Niño events, which usually peak in December, are characterized by warmer-than-average temperatures in the Tropical Pacific Ocean. They can have a significant impact on weather patterns across North America, causing the northern U.S. and Canada to become warmer and drier than usual while the southern U.S. becomes wetter.

In Colorado, El Niños generally produce more snow on the southern side of the state as the storm tracks toward the Southwest U.S.

Sam Collentine, a Colorado-based meteorologist for the OpenSnow forecasting and reporting service, said Colorado is usually around average for snowfall El Niño during winters, with sometimes stronger beginnings and ends of the season.

El Niños are usually defined using the Niño 3.4 Index to measure how much warmer the sea surface temperatures are in the Pacific Ocean compared to a long-term average.

El Niño conditions occur when the average Niño 3.4 Index is above +0.5 degrees Celsius.

An official El Niño event requires the running three-month average index to be +0.5 degrees Celsius or higher for five consecutive months.

The Index for August was +1.3 degrees Celsius, and the NCAR’s forecasting system predicts the index will rise to +2.4 degrees during December, January and February. The 1997 to 1998 El Niño peaked at +2.4 degrees.

The experimental NCAR El Niño forecast was created to more thoroughly explore what phenomena in the Earth system might be predictable from a season to two years in advance.

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• 2023
• September
• 29

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