Staff Correspondent<\/p>\n
The 2020-2021 La Nina weather phenomenon has ended, the UN\u2019s World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday.\u00a0 La Nina refers to the large-scale cooling of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, occurring every two to seven years.\u00a0 The effect has widespread impacts on weather around the world \u2014 typically the opposite impacts to the El Nino weather phenomenon, which has a warming influence on global temperatures.\u00a0 The WMO said neutral conditions \u2014 meaning neither the El Nino or La Nina being in effect \u2014 are likely to dominate the tropical Pacific in the next few months, while air temperatures are expected to be above average between June and August, especially in the northern hemisphere.\u00a0 La Nina conditions have been in place since August-September 2020, according to atmospheric and oceanic indicators.\u00a0 The phenomenon appeared to have peaked in October-November as a moderate strength event.\u00a0 There is a 78 percent chance of neutral conditions in the tropical Pacific until July, decreasing to 55 percent by August-October, said the WMO.\u00a0 \u201cLa Nina has a temporary global cooling effect, which is typically strongest in the second year of the event. This means that 2021 has got off to a relatively cool start \u2014 by recent standards,\u201d said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.\u00a0 \u201cThis should not lull us into a false sense of security that there is a pause in climate change.\u201d\u00a0 El Nino and La Nina are among the major drivers of the Earth\u2019s climate system.\u00a0 \u201cCarbon dioxide concentrations remain at record high levels and so will continue to drive global warming. According to new predictions issued by WMO, there is a 90 percent likelihood of at least one year between 2021-2025 becoming the warmest on record,\u201d said Taalas.\u00a0 \u201cThis would dislodge 2016 \u2014 a strong El Nino year \u2014 from the top ranking.\u201d\u00a0 The last La Nina, which was brief and relatively weak, began developing in November 2017 and ended in April 2018.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Staff Correspondent The 2020-2021 La Nina weather phenomenon has ended, the UN\u2019s World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday.\u00a0 La Nina refers to the large-scale cooling of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, occurring every two to seven years.\u00a0 The effect has widespread impacts on weather around the world \u2014 typically the opposite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1653,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions\/1653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}