As an El Niño in the Pacific Ocean appears poised to become one of the strongest on record, scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) are closely watching the potential implications for worldwide weather patterns.

El Niño is a periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It is part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, in which Pacific surface waters cycle between warmer-than-average (El Niño) and cooler-than-average (La Niña) temperatures. ENSO is often  thought to be one of the most influential drivers of weather patterns across Earth.

El Niño experts at NSF NCAR are available to explain issues to the news media such as:

• The potential influence of El Niño on precipitation and storm systems around the globe, and the extent to which impacts can be predicted
• The implications for hurricane activity in both the Atlantic and Pacific
• How scientists are using El Niño and La Niña, along with other ocean-atmosphere patterns, to predict regional weather patterns months to a decade in advance
• Earth system teleconnections, in which ocean or atmospheric conditions in one location can affect weather patterns thousands of miles away with implications for wildfire risk, heat waves, drought, and agricultural production

James Done
Done’s research focuses on the behavior of hurricanes and their potential impact on both coastal communities and offshore facilities. As a Willis Research Fellow, he partners with the insurance industry to improve our understanding of seasonal hurricane activity and how El Niño and La Niña affect these powerful storms in the Atlantic and Pacific.

John Fasullo
Fasullo focuses on societally relevant research aimed at understanding and predicting Earth system variability, including factors that cause El Niño and La Niña and their influence on weather patterns around the globe. His research has demonstrated that catastrophic Australian bushfires in 2019-2020 contributed to ocean cooling thousands of miles away, ultimately nudging the Tropical Pacific into a rare multi-year La Niña event.

Nathan Lenssen
Lenssen is an expert in El Niño and La Niña teleconnections and their global impacts on weather patterns and society. He has studied the challenges of predicting ENSO and its impacts, with his research showing ENSO impacts are more predictable during particularly powerful El Niño events, such as what is anticipated for this coming winter. 

Jerry Meehl
Meehl’s research interests include quantifying the impacts of ocean-atmospheric events such as ENSO, studying the predictability of regional weather patterns from the next season to the next decade, and identifying the influence of atmospheric constituents like wildfire smoke on weather patterns. He also examines teleconnections, tracking how changes in ocean temperatures or land cover can influence distant weather patterns. 

Isla Simpson
Simpson’s research focuses on using computer models to understand and predict Earth system variability at spatial scales ranging from regional to planetary and timescales from seasonal to multi-decadal. A major component of her work is the response of the atmosphere to large-scale events such as El Niño and La Niña, as well as other ocean-atmosphere interactions.

Stephen Yeager
Yeager focuses on long-term prediction, using Earth system models and historical data to explore how to forecast regional weather patterns as much as a decade into the future. This emerging area of research draws heavily on the influence of the ocean on the atmosphere, including the impacts of El Niño and La Niña. Yeager also helped develop an experimental system to better predict El Niño and La Niña conditions a season to two years in advance.

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