El Nino -> warmere en nattere winter voor Zuid-Californië

A wetter, warmer winter ahead
El Niño's return should dampen the Southland
^{BY DANA BARTHOLOMEW, Staff Writer}

After the hottest summer on record, weather forecasters predicted Thursday that moderate El Niño conditions would usher in a warmer winter and greater number of storms by spring.

El Niño is a warming of the water in the tropical Pacific that is associated with changes in air pressure and the movement of high-level winds that can affect weather worldwide. The conditions are likely to continue into early next year, and scientists said there is potential for them to strengthen.

"Right now, we're leaning toward wetter-than-average conditions in Southern California, but a much more moderate event than in 1997-98," said Vernon Kousky, lead El Niño forecaster for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center in Washington, D.C.

"You should get more storms around Southern California."

Scientists say ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have risen remarkably in the past two weeks and may strengthen into a moderate El Niño by winter.

A climate phenomenon linked to warm sea surface temperatures, El Niño impacts global weather and has been blamed for massive flooding, damaging surf and landslides in Southern California.

Some researchers, however, doubted the potential for a drenching winter.

"Right now, it's El Niño pequeño," or a little El Niño, said Bill Patzert, research oceanographer for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

"Don't make an investment in umbrellas. To have impact in Southern California, it would have to take steroids over the next three months."

NOAA forecasters said this year's weak El Niño may have already tamed the Atlantic hurricane season with milder-than-expected weather.

In the past month, the developing El Niño has brought drier-than-average weather to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, areas generally affected first by El Niño conditions.

A moderate El Niño this winter, according to the NOAA, could bring warmer temperatures to western and northern U.S. regions and to western and central Canada.

El Niño could also make the Gulf Coast and Florida wetter and bring drier conditions to the Ohio Valley, the Pacific Northwest and U.S. islands in the tropical Pacific.

"We'll just get Seattle's storms," said David Neelin, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"This is a moderate El Niño that increases the chances in Southern California we'll have a rainy winter."