El Niño exits. Will dry conditions return to California?
After a year of dominance, El Niño’s wrath has come to end — but it’s climate-churning counterpart, La Niña, is hot on its heels and could signal a return to dryness for California. El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, sometimes referred to as ENSO. The climate pattern in the tropical Pacific is the single largest driver of weather conditions worldwide, and has been actively disrupting global temperatures and precipitation patterns since its arrival last summer. Among other effects, the El Niño event contributed to months of record-high global ocean temperatures, extreme heat stress to coral reefs, drought in the Amazon and Central America, and record-setting atmospheric rivers on the U.S. West Coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its latest ENSO update.