Now It's Official: El Nino Is Here

Schematic map of North America showing the 
typical effects of an El Nino.  Canada, 
unfortunately gets warmer and drier, while the
southern United States gets wetter and stormier.

I've been advertising for weeks now in this blog that the El Nino global weather pattern and its extremes was on its way. 

Now, it's officially here. 

Which means there's a good chance the world could see its hottest on record year this year, or more likely in 2024.

El Nino tends to make the world a hotter place.  The hottest year on record so far, 2016, was during the last El Nino.

The opposite of El Nino, known as La Nina, tends to cool the world a bit.  Until now, we've been in a La Nina for more than three years. Even though it's suppose to be cooler, the past three years have been among the warmest, but not the warmest on record on a global basis.  

Already, global sea surface temperatures on average are the hottest on record. Hotter oceans can release some of their heat to the atmosphere, so we might be on our way already to new global record high temperatures. 

Most of the time, but not always, El Nino brings warmer, drier weather to Canada and the northern United States. That's kind of bad news for us in Vermont, since it's already dry. 

It's really bad news for Canada, much of which is suffering from drought and a ton of forest fires. They really need some cool, wet weather up there in the Great (no longer so) White North. 

El Nino usually makes the southern United States wetter, which increases the risk of floods. But it does reduce the amount of hurricanes. The question, as noted in a past post here, is whether super warm waters in the Atlantic Ocean will overrule El Nino and produce a lot of hurricanes anyway.   

These trends aren't guarantees. There could always be other factors at play in the atmosphere that could make this El Nino not play by the "rules."

How strong this El Nino becomes also matters. A stronger one could make the extremes associated with the phenomenon even more pronounced. Many of the long range computer models suggest this El Nino will be on the strong side.  It already seems to have a lot of momentum as it develops.

There's no telling how long this El Nino will last. Most of them that start in the spring or summer, like this one, last at least through the following winter.  Which could disappoint Vermont snow lovers, as El Ninos more often than not suppress our cold season snowfall. 

However, in general, El Nino doesn't have quite as predictable effect on Vermont's weather and climate than in some other areas of the world. True to form, here in Vermont, weather and storms will always try to surprise us.