What to expect from La Niña

This fact sheet by Zero Carbon Analytics explains the mechanics, predictions, and regional impacts of La Niña, the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. It details the likelihood of a transition to La Niña in 2024, the increasing frequency of multi-year events, and how human-caused climate change influences these phenomena without offsetting overall global warming.

• There is a high probability of a shift in climate states in 2024, with an 85% chance of moving from El Niño to neutral conditions between April and June, and a 60% chance of La Niña developing between June and August. Long-range models suggest this will be an Eastern Pacific (EP) event.
• Multi-year La Niña events are becoming more frequent, with half of the ten such events from the last century occurring in the last 25 years. These prolonged events increase the risk of weather extremes; for example, the 'triple-dip' La Niña from 2020-2023 caused severe flooding in northern Australia, extreme drought in the Horn of Africa, and impacted approximately 15% of Pakistan's population through heavy rainfall and flooding.
• Human-caused climate change is believed to contribute to the increased variability and frequency of extreme La Niña events. Additionally, climate change may hinder the predictability of extreme El Niño and La Niña events, complicating preparation efforts.
• While La Niña temporarily reduces the earth's average surface temperature by about 0.1°C, it does not counteract long-term global warming. Since industrialization, the earth's average temperature has risen by approximately 1.36°C, and recent La Niña years have remained among the top 10 hottest years ever recorded.
• La Niña is associated with specific regional weather trends: drier conditions in East Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania), the southern US, and parts of South America (southern Brazil, Uruguay, northern Argentina, southern Bolivia); and wetter conditions in eastern South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, northern/eastern Australia, southeast Asia, India, and northern South America (northern Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela).
• The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) often interacts with ENSO events, with negative IOD events typically accompanying La Niña. These negative IOD events are linked to drought in East Africa and extreme rainfall in Australia and Indonesia.

APA

Team, Z. (2024). What to expect from La Niña. Zero Carbon Analytics. https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/science/what-to-expect-from-la-nina/

Chicago

Team, ZCA. What to expect from La Niña. Zero Carbon Analytics, 2024. https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/science/what-to-expect-from-la-nina/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Team |first1=ZCA |title=What to expect from La Niña |publisher=Zero Carbon Analytics |date=14 May 2024 |url=https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/science/what-to-expect-from-la-nina/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{team2024what, author = {Team, ZCA}, title = {{What to expect from La Niña}}, institution = {Zero Carbon Analytics}, year = {2024}, month = may, url = {https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/science/what-to-expect-from-la-nina/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }