What the new 'astonishing' El Niño forecast means for California – SFGATE

What the new ‘astonishing’ El Niño forecast means for California  SFGATE

This year’s very strong El Niño is still gathering momentum in the Pacific Ocean, according to new data. El Niño not only strengthened in October but will also likely continue to do so through this year, according to a monthly outlook that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center published Thursday. The memo gives about a 60% chance that El Niño will make history by early 2027, surpassing the strength of all events since 1950. “This is not your normal El Niño,” Daniel Rudnick, a physical oceanographer for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, told SFGATE. “This is really big.” El Niño, the warm phase of a climate pattern that develops along the equator in the Pacific Ocean, can scramble winter weather in California and across the globe.

Year to year, this natural phenomenon alternates with an opposite phase, La Niña, and with neutral ocean conditions. El Niño emerged in June, and in California, it has impacted the coast first. Over the summer, it supercharged the eastern Pacific hurricane season, pushing massive waves into Southern California. This fall, it has raised sea levels along California’s shores to unprecedented heights. Oceanographers are making dire warnings about worsening coastal flooding and erosion during king tides and once stormy weather begins. “It’s clearly beginning to impact California,” Alexander