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There is a 55 per cent chance of a weak La Nina affecting global weather and climate patterns over the next three months, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday. La Nina usually brings a temporary cooling effect on global average temperatures but many regions are still expected to record warmer-than-normal conditions, the UN climate and weather agency said in its latest update. La Nina and El Nino are opposite phases of a Pacific Ocean climate cycle known as El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). La Nina is the periodic large-scale cooling of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean and is linked to changes in tropical winds, pressure and rainfall. El Nino is the "warm phase" of this cycle. It often weakens India's monsoon and increases the chances of drought. According to the latest forecasts from WMO's Global Producing Centres for Seasonal Prediction, oceanic and atmospheric indicators in mid-November 2025 point to borderlin
A long-awaited La Nina has finally appeared, but the periodic cooling of Pacific Ocean waters is weak and unlikely to cause as many weather problems as usual, meteorologists said Thursday. La Nina, the flip side of the better-known El Nino, is an irregular rising of unusually cold water in a key part of the central equatorial Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide. The last El Nino was declared finished June 2024, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasters have been expecting La Nina for months. Its delayed arrival may have been influenced by the world's oceans being much warmer than the last few years, said Michelle L'Heureux, head of NOAA's El Nino team. It's totally not clear why this La Nina is so late to form, and I have no doubt it's going to be a topic of a lot of research, L'Heureux said. In the United States, La Ninas tend to cause drier weather in the South and West. They tend to make weather wetter in parts of Indonesia, northern ...
The UN weather agency is predicting that the phenomenon known as La Nina is poised to last through the end of this year, a mysterious triple dip the first this century caused by three straight years of its effect on climate patterns like drought and flooding worldwide. The World Meteorological Organisation on Wednesday said La Nina conditions, which involve a large-scale cooling of ocean surface temperatures, have strengthened in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific with an increase in trade winds in recent weeks. The agency's top official was quick to caution that the triple dip doesn't mean global warming is easing. It is exceptional to have three consecutive years with a La Nina event. Its cooling influence is temporarily slowing the rise in global temperatures, but it will not halt or reverse the long-term warming trend, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said. La Nina is a natural and cyclical cooling of parts of the equatorial Pacific that changes weather patterns .