El Nino, La Nina, ENSO

Scienitsts find connection between El Niño and fewer spring tornadoes in the south-central United States.

How much warmer or colder than average would sea surface temperatures be in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean in April 2015? That's the question we asked participants to answer in our new online game, in which players pit their predictive powers against experts’ opinions. The answer is in...

A new analysis suggests that in the winter following a La Niña, dryness in California often deepens into drought.  Consistent with that pattern, California’s current drought began in 2011-12, during the second year of a La Niña episode.

This pair of maps shows whether your state tends to have wet, dry, or average springs during El Niño, and how often the wet or dry pattern occurred during the last 10 El Niño years.

After a surprisingly rough summer for coral reefs in 2014, NOAA scientists are warning that warm ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans could set the stage for a global outbreak of coral bleaching—the loss of corals’ food-producing algae—in 2015. 

From Hawaii to the Florida Keys, the surprising intensity of coral heat stress in 2014 has scientists wondering what to expect in 2015, when El Niño is forecasted to finally develop.