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Scientists change how El Nino is labeled to keep up with spike in temperature
The new Relative Oceanic Niño Index removes background ocean warming to improve detection of El Niño and La Niña, likely increasing La Niña identifications, NOAA said.
- NOAA adopted the Relative Oceanic Niño Index this month, which will influence future El Niño detection and forecasts.
- Because background warming blurred anomalies, background warming across the tropical Pacific masked El Niño and La Niña signals, and NOAA’s 30-year average 'normal' no longer kept pace.
- Scientists describe RONI as a simple math trick that subtracts tropical Pacific anomalies from the Niño region, better capturing ocean–atmosphere coupling with recent differences up to 0.5°C.
- Scientists say the new index will reclassify more events as La Niña, enabling earlier detection and improving long-range forecasts, which could affect the Atlantic hurricane season.
- A new Nature Geoscience study found a 2022 jump in Earth's energy imbalance, attributing about three-quarters of it to human-caused warming plus a cycle shift and about 23% to the long La Niña pattern.
60 Articles
60 Articles
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