The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has released its latest forecast for the chance of La Niña emerging towards the end of this year.
According to the WMO, there is a 55 per cent chance of La Niña conditions from September to November, and a 60 per cent likelihood from October 2024 to February 2025.
This weaker forecast follows its June prediction, which put the chance of La Niña at 60 per cent chance during July-September and 70 per cent during August-November.
La Niña is the large-scale, periodic cooling of the ocean surface temperatures across the east-central equatorial Pacific. This climate pattern is part of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and also the counterpart of El Niño, which causes warmer sea surface temperatures.
However, La Niña and El Niño are occurring against a backdrop of human-induced climate change, which is causing skyrocketing global temperatures, exacerbating extreme weather and climate, and impacting seasonal rainfall and temperature patterns.
Indeed, this year, the world endured its warmest summer on record, and 2024 is now pegged to beat 2023 as the hottest year.
Further, the WMO noted that the past nine years have been the warmest on record, even with the cooling influence of a multi-year La Niña from 2020 to early 2023.
In a statement last week, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that since June 2023, we have seen an extended streak of “exceptional” global land and sea surface temperature, and even if a short-term cooling La Niña event emerges, it will not change the long-term trajectory of rising global temperatures due to “heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
“For the past three months, neutral conditions have prevailed – neither El Niño nor La Niña. But we have still seen widespread extreme weather conditions, including intense heat and devastating rainfall,” said Saulo.
Adding: “This is why the Early Warnings for All initiative remains WMO’s top priority. Seasonal forecasts for El Niño and La Niña and the associated impacts on the climate patterns globally are an important tool to inform early warnings and early action.”