{"id":480989,"date":"2026-02-17T16:01:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T16:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/480989\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T16:01:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T16:01:14","slug":"global-warming-forced-scientists-to-change-the-way-they-look-at-el-nino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/480989\/","title":{"rendered":"Global warming forced scientists to change the way they look at El Ni\u00f1o"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Is your idea of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a mainly informed by a 1990s-era Chris Farley sketch<\/a> from \u201cSaturday Night Live?\u201d The late comedian\u2019s definition was hilarious, albeit a bit lacking in scientific precision. (Spanish for \u201cThe Ni\u00f1o.\u201d)\n <\/p>\n

\n There\u2019s now far more interest in the tropical Pacific climate pattern, and it\u2019s even more complicated than SNL made it out to be.\n <\/p>\n

\n El Ni\u00f1o happens<\/a> when ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific spike way above average. Because that region is so much warmer than the water around it, the atmosphere reacts and weather patterns change \u2014 which is why we care so much about El Ni\u00f1o and its cooler sister, La Ni\u00f1a.\n <\/p>\n

\n The old way of detecting it was known as the Oceanic Ni\u00f1o Index: Scientists compared the ocean temperature in a specific part of the tropical Pacific, known as the Ni\u00f1o 3.4 region, to the past 30 years of average temperatures in that region. The bigger the difference, the bigger the El Ni\u00f1o.\n <\/p>\n

\n But that method ignored what was going on in the rest of the tropical Pacific.\n <\/p>\n

\n Global warming threw a wrench into this method. The whole tropical Pacific is warming so quickly that it\u2019s masking the El Ni\u00f1o-related anomalies. If the ocean is overheated everywhere, then El Ni\u00f1o is harder to see.\n <\/p>\n

\n So scientists just switched to a new way of measuring El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a: RONI \u2014 the Relative Oceanic Ni\u00f1o Index. The new method contains a simple yet effective math trick. Scientists subtract the temperature anomalies in the rest of the tropical Pacific from those in the region most important for El Ni\u00f1o.\n <\/p>\n

\n The new method basically deletes climate change from the whole equation, which makes El Ni\u00f1o easier to spot. Scientists can now see it earlier, and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n It is vital that scientists accurately predict and detect El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a events, since they can alter weather patterns thousands of miles away, causing billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others, while also affecting the Atlantic hurricane season.\n <\/p>\n

\n To get a better handle on what this new index means, and how it may perform, I checked in with two of the most knowledgeable scientists in this field: Michelle L\u2019Heureux of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Emily Becker, a researcher at the University of Miami.\n <\/p>\n

\n L\u2019Heureux, who leads El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a forecasting for NOAA, said the new index \u201cbetter captures the interactions between the ocean and atmosphere across the tropical Pacific Ocean.\u201d The older method \u201cis increasingly capturing changes in the ocean that are not reflected in the overlying atmospheric circulation.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a are known as coupled phenomena, meaning that changes in the seas are reflected in shifts in weather patterns in the atmosphere.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cCoupled means that changes in the winds, rainfall, etc. need to be moving in sync with the changes that are occurring at the ocean surface,\u201d L\u2019Heureux said.\n <\/p>\n

\n L\u2019Heureux said the background warming taking place across the Pacific has been gradually causing the original method to lose sight of El Ni\u00f1o. \u201cThe old index was kind of like looking at the tropical Pacific through blurry glasses and now we have upgraded to new prescription glasses and can see El Ni\u00f1o\/La Ni\u00f1a more sharply,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Becker pointed to human-caused climate change as the culprit for that blurry vision.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhat we found was that over the last decade or so, the strength of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a events, as measured by our traditional Ni\u00f1o 3.4 index, was getting out of sync with the impact patterns that we were seeing,\u201d Becker said. \u201cWe found through research that was happening because the global oceans are warming very quickly, and they were warming too fast for our old measure.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n She said the new index better captures the intensity of these events and their effects on weather patterns, while subtracting the influence of a shifting climatic baseline.\n <\/p>\n

\n In other words, \u201cThe Ni\u00f1o\u201d from Farley\u2019s sketch \u2013 which was filmed during the height of a major El Ni\u00f1o event that occurred from 1997 through 1998, can now be detected with greater precision, and its impacts can be foreseen more clearly.\n <\/p>\n

\n Correction:
\n A previous version of this story mischaracterized the old way scientists detected El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is your idea of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a mainly informed by a 1990s-era Chris Farley sketch from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-480989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}