El Niño Update

I’ve received many questions over the past week pertaining to the current status of El Niño, and if we can expect any kind of impacts from it.  Well to start off, the state of this climate influencer  has made a contribution to our unseasonably cool summer.  The month of July has been very unusual in reference to temperatures.

Brian Bledsoe, chief meteorologist at KKTV in Colorado Springs, has recently published a piece online that takes a very in-depth look at El Nino and how things are shaping up.  The following is a snippet from his piece:

If a traditional El Niño doesn’t look as if it’s going to develop does that mean we won’t see an El Niño? No, just a different type. Modoki is the Japanese term for “similar, but different”. A Modoki El Niño is a specific sub-type of El Niño pattern that has the warmest water in the central and western Pacific Ocean. This is what a Modoki El Niño would look like in terms of sea surface temperature anomalies:


Notice where the warmest water resides in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, right in the central/west central region. Comparatively cooler water is located just off the west coast of South America, where the warmest water exists as of right now. The transition that takes place in the next few months will likely allow the water off the west coast of South America to cool, while the central Pacific warms.

Make sure you check out the rest of Brian’s article, as it provdies a much more in-depth El Niño update.  It provides you with a very informative, educated explanation as to what’s going on.