I live in the Midwestern US, for context.
I understand that La Niña and El Niño are more or less cyclical (ignoring ENSO Neutral which just seems to more often than not just be a transition between the two) and that weather effects differ depending on where you are in the world. But it seems as if every time there’s a transition between the two, no matter if we’re transitioning to La Niña or El Niño, it somehow means that we’re “really in for a hot one this year!”
[A 2024 article from CNN explaining that La Niña makes it hot](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/13/weather/el-nino-la-nina-summer-forecast-climate/index.html).
[A 2020 article, also from CNN, indicating that El Niño leads to higher world average temperatures](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/09/10/weather/la-nia-is-here-trnd)
Surely they can’t both mean hotter than normal, right? We’re almost always in one or the other. If it’s hotter than average all the time, then that’s the new average.
Make it make sense.
In: Planetary Science
El Niño/La Niña has a better relationship to wetter/drier more so than hotter/colder.
The temperature of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America (where we determine El Niño vs La Niña) influences the track storms take both across the U.S. and in the Gulf of Mexico (Hurricane season).
Regardless of which one we are in, the amount of green house gases in the atmosphere continues to rise, trapping more heat and that’s why we continually set monthly heat records.
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