JAKARTA, Feb. 6 – El Nino's expected impacts from February to April 2010 include drier-than-average conditions over Indonesia, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center (CPC) reported.
In its El Nino Advisory emailed Friday to ANTARA, CPC reported a significant El Nino persisted throughout the equatorial Pacific Ocean during January 2010.
Although sea surface temperature (SST) departures in the El Nino-3.4 region decreased to +1.2 degrees C in late January, SSTs continued to be sufficiently warm to support deep tropical convection.
Equatorial convection over the central Pacific remained enhanced during the month while convection over Indonesia exhibited considerable week-to-week variability, Maryland-based CPC continued.
Over the last several months, a series of oceanic Kelvin waves contributed to the build-up of heat content anomalies in the central and eastern Pacific.
The latest Kelvin wave was associated with temperature departures exceeding +2 degrees C down to 150m depth across the eastern half of the equatorial Pacific.
While low-level winds varied, low-level westerly and upper-level easterly wind anomalies generally prevailed during January.
Collectively, these oceanic and atmospheric anomalies reflect a strong and mature El Nino episode.
Nearly all models predict decreasing SST anomalies in the El Nino-3.4 region through 2010 and model spread increases at longer lead times.
Nearly half of the models indicate the 3-month Nino-3.4 SST anomaly will drop below +0.5 degree C around April-May-June 2010, indicating a transition to ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation -neutral conditions during Northern Hemisphere spring.
However, predicting timing of this transition is highly uncertain.
El Nino impacts are expected to last into Northern Hemisphere spring even as equatorial SST departures decrease partly due to typical warming that occurs between now and April/May.
For contiguous United States, potential El Nino impacts include above-average precipitation for the southern tier of the country, with below-average precipitation in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley.
Below-average snowfall and above-average temperatures are most likely across the northern tier of states (excluding New England) while below-average temperatures are favored for the south-central and southeastern states.
This discussion is a consolidated effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOAA's National Weather Service and respective funded institutions.
Oceanic and atmospheric conditions are updated weekly on CPC's web site.
Forecasts for evolution of El Nino/La Nina are updated monthly in the Forecast Forum section of CPC's Climate Diagnostics Bulletin.
The next ENSO Diagnostics Discussion is scheduled for March 4, 2010. (PNA/Antara)
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