Scientists Found Ways To Predict El Niño’s Weather Effects a Year Ahead

Scientists have developed a new model allowing them to predict weather phenomena El Niño over a year ahead, giving threatened countries – from Peru to Indonesia and Australia – more time to prepare for the complex weather pattern to come.

The El Niño impacts, ranging from droughts to disastrous flooding, are caused by substantial sea-surface temperature rise in the east-central Equatorial Pacific. The new high-tech model uses an algorithm that analyses changing air temperatures across the Pacific, giving a significantly earlier prediction than alternative methods.

“Conventional methods are unable to make a reliable ‘El Nino’ forecast more than six months in advance. With our method, we have roughly doubled the previous warning time,” says German physicist Armin Bunde, co-developer of the latest El Niño forecast model.