El Nio will likely peak during the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2015-16: U.S. National Weather Service

El Niño will likely peak during the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2015-16, with a transition to “El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) neutral” anticipated during the late spring or early summer 2016, according to the United States’ National Weather Service.

A statement from the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center on Thursday noted that “the forecaster consensus remains nearly unchanged, with the expectation that this El Niño could rank among the top three strongest episodes” as measured by the three-month sea surface temperature departures in the Niño 3.4 region (see graph below) going back to 1950.

The statement said that a strong El Niño continued during October, as indicated by well above-average SSTs across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Most Niño indices increased during the month, although the far eastern Niño-1+2 index decreased, accentuating the maximum in anomalous SST farther west. The subsurface temperature anomalies also increased in the central and eastern Pacific, the Climate Prediction Center reported. [click image below to enlarge]

“El Niño has already produced significant global impacts. El Niño is expected to affect temperature and precipitation patterns across the United States during the upcoming months,” the statement concluding, noting that the three-month seasonal outlook will be updated on Nov. 19. “Seasonal outlooks generally favour below-average temperatures and above-median precipitation across the southern tier of the United States, and above-average temperatures and below-median precipitation over the northern tier of the United States.”