After seven months of waiting, La Niña—the cooler sister of El Niño—finally showed up in the eastern Pacific Ocean in early December 2024.
After seven months of waiting, La Niña—the cooler sister of El Niño—finally showed up in the eastern Pacific Ocean in early December 2024. La Niña may not stick around long, though. According to NOAA, the Pacific may return to neutral conditions in spring 2025.
Part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, La Niña appears when energized easterly trade winds intensify the upwelling of cooler water from the depths of the eastern tropical Pacific, causing a large-scale cooling of surface waters in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean near the equator. The stronger-than-usual trade winds also push the warm equatorial surface waters westward toward Asia and Australia. This dramatic cooling of the ocean’s surface layers affects the atmosphere by modifying the moisture content across the Pacific.
In a report published on January 9, 2025, the NOAA Climate Prediction Center confirmed that La Niña conditions were present. They measured sea surface temperatures 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) below average in an area of the tropical Pacific, from 170° to 120° West longitude, known as the Niño 3.4 region.
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory
