Weather Watch for El Nino Rescinded as Pacific Cools

The off-again, on-again phenomenon known as El Nino, the abnormally warm ocean current that wreaked global chaos three years ago, is off for now, researchers said Tuesday.

But some scientists say it may be as long as this fall before they can flatly rule out a return of El Nino later this year.

Just two months ago, weather scientists working independently in California, New York and Washington, D.C., said they had spotted some early signs of El Nino, including warmer temperatures in the Pacific Ocean off South America and a decrease in the trade winds along the Equator in the Pacific.

And relying on this information--which reflected conditions in December, January and February--the Climate Analysis Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued an El Nino advisory March 13.

But this week, in the face of new information indicating that temperatures in the Pacific are back to normal and in some cases cooler than usual, the Climate Analysis Center rescinded that advisory.

“It looks like the conditions are moderating. . . . There seems to be no reason for a formal El Nino watch,” said Ants Leetmaa, an oceanographer at the Climate Analysis Center, in a telephone interview from Washington.

In 1982-83, El Nino disrupted weather patterns across three-fourths of the planet, causing several billion dollars in damage and more than 800 deaths, including a spate of intense winter storms that destroyed millions of dollars of property along the California coast.

Because of its severity, Leetmaa said, weather scientists this time have been more watchful and want to avoid being taken by surprise, as many of them were four years ago.