La Niña is not far behind as indicated by worldwide weather models. The equatorial sea surface temperatures (SST) are near average across the eastcentral and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
The cold anomaly developing along the equatorial eastern Pacific, lying between Longitudes 150°W and 90°W, has shown a prominent wave-like structure in the SST image on June 8, 2016. The bluish waves (in the image above) are the instability waves that develop due to the transition from a strong El Niño to a strong La Niña. This transition is generally associated with remarkable air-sea interactions.
We can see from the animation above that the blue waves have kept increasing from April to June, 2016.
La Niña will keep developing during the Monsoon in India, with about 75% chances of full-fledged La Niña during the fall and winter of 2016-17.
After the month of June, El Niño is expected to diminish completely. The entire Pacific will cool down and temperature anomalies will also show negative values. We would then enter the neutral phase. But, establishment of La Niña is a long drawn process.
La Niña will be declared only when the Niño 3.4 index of overlapping 3-months season will reach the threshold value of -0.5°C or less. A full-fledged La Niña will form when this process continues for 5 consecutive terms. This could be possible only after September or during fall of 2016-17. We would like to mention that the development of a strong La Niña is one of the favorable conditions for a good Monsoon in India.
The image below shows the latest update on La Niña conditions:
Image credit – climate prediction centre
Please Note: Any information picked up from here should be attributed to skymetweather.com.
