The Australian weather agency said the likelihood of La Nina occurring in the coming months has decreased, Reuters reported. The agency also noted that if La Nina does appear, it will be weak and short-lived.
"The likelihood of a La Nina event occurring in the coming months has decreased," the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said in its bi-weekly update on October 15.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said its climate model does not predict La Nina will develop, and four of the six other climate models it examined also shared the same view.
Other meteorologists are predicting La Nina’s arrival. Last week, a U.S. government forecaster said there was a 60 percent chance La Nina would form by late November and last until January-March 2025. A month earlier, the U.S. weather agency said there was a 71 percent chance La Nina would form.
Previously, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted that La Nina would appear from September to November (with a 60% probability) and was expected to last until January-March 2025.
La Nina is a global weather phenomenon marked by cooler than average ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. La Nina's effects on weather are most pronounced during the Northern Hemisphere's winter months and have a much weaker effect during the summer.
The occurrence of La Nina and El Nino is of great importance to global agriculture, with La Nina increasing rainfall in eastern Australia, Southeast Asia and India but decreasing rainfall in the Americas.
A weak La Nina is expected to affect temperatures, rainfall and snowfall across the United States this winter, according to CNN.
The US Climate Prediction Center (CPC) indicates that La Nina has not yet appeared, but there is a 60% chance of it appearing in November. When La Nina appears, the effects of La Nina will be recorded throughout the winter and are likely to last until at least early spring of next year.
La Nina or El Nino are never the only factors influencing the weather in a given season or location, but they are highlighted because they often have an outsized impact on winter weather in the US, especially when they are too strong, CNN notes.
Earlier forecasts from the U.S. Climate Prediction Center (CPC) showed that this year's weather will have many characteristics of a typical La Nina winter. The entire northern U.S. is expected to be wetter than normal this winter, especially in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and parts of the interior Northeast.
