UAlbany Atmospheric Scientist Shares Thoughts on El Niño in The Conversation

By Mike Nolan

ALBANY, N.Y. (Feb. 13, 2023) — After a long stretch of record heat and heavy rainfall, El Niño, a global climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, is starting to lose its strength.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projects that El Niño will continue to weaken and likely be gone by late spring 2024. 

Paul Roundy, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, studies waves in the tropical atmosphere and ocean, including how these waves interact with the El Niño Southern Oscillation Cycle.

He recently published an article in The Conversation that explains the impact of El Niño and what to expect through the rest of 2024.

“El Niño and its opposite, La Niña, are climate patterns that influence weather around the world,” Roundy said. “El Niño tends to raise global temperatures, as we saw in 2023, while La Niña events tend to be slightly cooler. The two result in global temperatures fluctuating above and below the warming trend set by climate change.”

“El Niño is likely to end in late spring or early summer, shifting briefly to neutral. There’s a good chance we will see La Niña conditions this fall. But forecasting when that happens and what comes next is harder.”

Although the 2023-24 El Niño event wasn’t the strongest in recent decades, Roundy called many aspects of it unusual.

It followed three years of La Niña conditions, and emerged quickly, from March to May 2023. The combination led to various weather extremes, such as the recent atmospheric river event that brought record rainfall to California. 

“La Niña cools the tropics but stores warm water in the western Pacific. It also warms the middle latitude oceans by weakening the winds and allowing more sunshine through,” Roundy said. “After three years of La Niña, the rapid emergence of El Niño helped make the Earth’s surface warmer than in any recent year.”

UAlbany recently rejoined The Conversation, a widely read service that publishes scientific research and other scholarly work in a way that’s accessible to general audiences. Faculty interested in writing for the publication are encouraged to reach out to the Office of Communications and Marketing.