Q&A: La Niña’s back

The report speaks of ‘La Niña’s natural cooling’ causing drought and increasing wildfire hazards in some areas. Weren’t such things supposed to be aggravated by alleged human-caused global warming, not by natural cooling effects?
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For the second straight year, the world heads into a new La Niña weather event, says Phys.org.

This would tend to dry out parts of an already parched and fiery American West and boost an already busy Atlantic hurricane season.

Just five months after the end of a La Niña that started in September 2020, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a new cooling of the Pacific is underway.

La Niña’s natural cooling of parts of the Pacific is the flip side of a warmer El Niño pattern and sets in motion changes to the world’s weather for months and sometimes years. But the changes vary from place to place and aren’t certainties, just tendencies.

La Niña tend to cause more agricultural and drought damage to the United States than El Niños and neutral conditions, according to a 1999 study. That study found La Niñas in general cause $2.2 billion to $6.5 billion in damage to the U.S. agriculture.

HOW STRONG AND HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?

There’s a 57% chance this will be a moderate La Niña and only 15% that it will be strong, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

He said it is unlikely to be as strong as last year’s because the second year of back-to-back La Niñas usually doesn’t quite measure up to the first.

This La Nina is expected to stretch through spring, Halpert said.

Continued here.