Category5Kaiju wrote:So considering that this El Nino officially attained "strong status," does that necessarily mean it'll likely be some time before we are able to get an El Nino again?
Yes, but not necessarily longer than usual. However, after this year's strong El Nino, we are likely to go into La Nina or at least cool neutral next year. ENSO has a frequency of about 3-6 years, though 2 years has been seen before. Judging by the past, we probably won't see another El Nino until 2026 or later. After the very strong 2015 El Nino, El Nino was again present 3 years later in 2018. In fact, at some point before 2017 went La Nina; that year had a brief period in the spring-early summer where Nino3.4 anomalies were at about +0.3C and the NWS consensus highlighted that a relatively early return of El Nino was at least moderately possible by winter/with La Nina and neutral also having similar decent odds. Take a look at this:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/b ... ye-la-niña At a very early point in that year, NOAA actually "gave a slight edge to El Nino developing.... with around a 50 percent chance", but it ended as a second year La Nina instead. Some weak El Nino probably could have happened that year if conditions were somewhat different. That was somewhat of a hard year to predict for ENSO. After the moderate 2009 event, it took 5 years. After the weak 2018 event, it also took 5 years unless you consider 2019 an unofficial El Nino. There isn't a strong correlation with the intensity and the duration of the ENSO cycle.
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