{"id":522590,"date":"2026-04-10T02:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T02:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522590\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T02:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T02:51:11","slug":"california-may-be-in-path-of-a-super-el-nino-it-could-bring-rain-floods-coastal-erosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522590\/","title":{"rendered":"California may be in path of a \u2018super\u2019 El Ni\u00f1o. It could bring rain, floods, coastal erosion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You\u2019re going to hear a lot about El Ni\u00f1o this year.<\/p>\n

The term refers to warmer-than-average waters along the equatorial Pacific that can influence weather across the globe, raising the odds of searing drought in some regions and torrential rain in others. Indicators increasingly suggest such an event will develop later this summer, and it\u2019s possible it could be the strongest of the century to affect Southern California.<\/p>\n

The prospect has been lighting up meteorology forums and bubbled into the mainstream consciousness this week with the release of an outlook by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts indicating that sea surface temperatures could exceed the seasonal average by 2 degrees Celsius. A subsequent forecast released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration puts the odds of that happening by late fall at 1 in 4.<\/p>\n

Some call El Ni\u00f1os that pass this threshold of warming super El Ni\u00f1os \u2014 relatively rare occurrences that are more likely to generate wide-ranging effects. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially the upper echelon of El Ni\u00f1o events,\u201d said Jonathan O\u2019Brien, meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o is one phase in a recurring global cycle known as the El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation, with its counterpart being La Ni\u00f1a. This cycle occurs when changes in tropical wind patterns \u2014 or trade winds \u2014 allow a massive reservoir of sun-baked seawater to slosh east across the Pacific and up against the Americas.<\/p>\n

This unusually warm water typically releases heat into the air, spiking global temperatures already climbing due to climate change from burning fossil fuels. It can also alter polar and tropical jet streams, sending storms on a path through Southern California and the southern United States, experts say.<\/p>\n

The amount of warm water available for this year\u2019s event exceeds that in 1997-98, which was among the strongest El Ni\u00f1o events of the century, said Paul Roundy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Albany. <\/p>\n

That winter, a relentless string of storms caused flooding and debris flows in California<\/a>, destroying homes, washing away roads and killing 17 people. Worldwide, a hurricane killed hundreds in Acapulco, and Indonesia recorded one of its worst droughts on record.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the signal continues to evolve as it currently is, it\u2019s possible that we achieve an event stronger than 1997,\u201d said Roundy, who predicts there\u2019s a roughly 20% chance that this year\u2019s El Ni\u00f1o is stronger than any other since the late 1870s, when an estimated 30 million to 40 million people died from droughts in Asia and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

The latest NOAA outlook, released Thursday, forecasts a more than 90% chance that an El Ni\u00f1o will develop by fall and a 50% chance that it will be at least a strong event, said Nathaniel Johnson, a meteorologist at NOAA\u2019s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab and a member of its El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation seasonal forecast team.<\/p>\n

The transition could take place rapidly, he said, adding that some research suggests climate change is contributing to more frequent, extreme swings from La Ni\u00f1a to El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

But even when strong El Ni\u00f1os do develop, they don\u2019t always translate into the weather conditions people have come to expect. <\/p>\n

In 2015-16, a super El Ni\u00f1o was predicted \u2014 which some forecasters dubbed a Godzilla El Ni\u00f1o \u2014 but California\u2019s yearly rainfall totals ended up being about average, said state climatologist Michael Anderson.<\/p>\n

\"Interstate <\/p>\n

Traffic on a flooded Interstate 5 is limited to one lane in each direction as California Department of Transportation workers try to clear drains and restart pumps in Sun Valley on Jan. 6, 2016.<\/p>\n

(Brian van der Brug \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

But in 1982-83, when another super El Ni\u00f1o occurred, storms destroyed multiple piers and ripped away a 400-foot section<\/a> of the Santa Monica Pier. The state\u2019s rainfall at the end of the year will be determined by more factors, such as the frequency and strength of atmospheric rivers, than whether it\u2019s technically an El Ni\u00f1o year, Anderson said.<\/p>\n

In Southern California, strong El Ni\u00f1os increase the likelihood of wet winters that replenish water supplies and tamp down wildfire risk but can also unleash flooding, debris flows and coastal erosion. Still, the exact effects are impossible to predict.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1os typically strengthen the subtropical jet stream, meaning more of California\u2019s weather in the fall and winter months tends to come in from the south, as opposed to the north, bringing in warmer air that carries more moisture, said O\u2019Brien, the U.S. Forest Service meteorologist.<\/p>\n

This could help limit Southern California\u2019s wildfire potential in the fall and winter, something that is typically shaped by the presence of Santa Ana winds. El Ni\u00f1o tilts the odds toward the early arrival of the winter rainfall that could dampen the risk of those winds fanning flames, O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are cautiously optimistic that we will get rain in the fall that kind of preempts the Santa Ana winds and limits our potential heading into the fall and winter months of next year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Still, much uncertainty remains.<\/p>\n

The climate system in the tropical Pacific is naturally less predictable in March and April, and even the most advanced models can struggle to capture how conditions will evolve, Tim Stockdale, principal scientist at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, wrote in an email. The picture typically becomes more clear between late May and June, he said.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just creatures on land that have to keep an eye on El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

The pattern, which can decrease the nutritional quality of plankton, is believed to have intensified the effects of an unusually warm blob of seawater along the California coast that persisted from 2013 through 2016, resulting in a mass die-off of sea lion pups<\/a> whose starving mothers weren\u2019t able to produce enough milk to sustain them.<\/p>\n

The sea lion breeding and pupping season is fast approaching at main rookeries such as the Channel Islands, according to Giancarlo Rulli, associate director of public relations for the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County. \u201cExperts are eyeing current oceanography reports with a healthy level of concern,\u201d he wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

Times Deputy Managing Editor Monte Morin contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019re going to hear a lot about El Ni\u00f1o this year. The term refers to warmer-than-average waters along…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[35361,776,11558,86791,121825,181638,1397,13676,1048,181639,181637,66882,90,42317,1054,56,54,55,37764,1942],"class_list":{"0":"post-522590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-chance","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-change","11":"tag-debris-flow","12":"tag-el-nino","13":"tag-el-ninos","14":"tag-environment","15":"tag-event","16":"tag-flooding","17":"tag-jonathan-obrien","18":"tag-late-fall","19":"tag-odd","20":"tag-science","21":"tag-southern-california","22":"tag-storm","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-unitedkingdom","26":"tag-winter","27":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}