his year’s El Niño might be one of the strongest on record, but its impacts on Colorado’s weather — and upcoming snow season — are still to be determined, climate and weather experts say.
The El Niño, a climate pattern that begins in the Pacific Ocean, can drive dry periods in some regions while others are hit by storms. And this year, it is already strong and likely to keep growing, according to forecasts. But because of Colorado’s inland location, and other factors that influence its weather cycle, climatologists aren’t yet ready to promise relief from this summer’s punishing drought.
“One thing that I see that makes me a little nervous is that people get really excited that it’s going to be this big snow year for Colorado,” said Peter Goble, Colorado’s assistant state climatologist. “I’m not saying it won’t be … but we definitely don’t have enough information to say that just based on the fact that El Niño is in place.”
The El Niño and its sister La Niña are opposing climate patterns that start when water is warmer or cooler than usual in a specific region that stretches from the coast of South America toward the central Pacific.
In a normal year, the water temperature is in the upper 70s, Goble said. (The average sea surface temperature across the world’s oceans outside the polar regions reached a record 70 degrees Fahrenheit Aug. 22, according to Accuweather.)
If the region’s water temperature is more than 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than usual, and stays that way for several months, then scientists call it an El Niño. In a typical warm cycle, the water temperature is closer to 80 or 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
Warmer ocean water leads to more evaporation and moisture in the atmosphere. And the El Niño alters wind patterns to guide more intense, wet storms into parts of North America.
Right now, some measurements are showing that water temperatures are more than 2 degrees warmer than usual, which is the marker of a “super,” or very strong, El Niño.
“It’s still growing and quite rapidly too,” Goble said. “Most models are predicting that it will be the strongest El Niño that we have measured. It will certainly be one of the strongest.”
But what happens in the Pacific Ocean, doesn’t stay in the Pacific. The warm and cool cycles, also called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, or ENSO, are one of the most important climate phenomena on Earth because they can change tropical wind patterns and shift the jet stream.
Jet streams, narrow bands of strong wind in the atmosphere, impact weather across the globe.
Because these cycles normally increase global temperatures, it’ll also likely be a warmer-than-average year, and conditions might not cool down easily.
“Our global average temperatures are moving into yet new territory still,” Goble said.
The ENSO cycles are normally strongest from late fall to midspring and peak in the winter. This year’s El Niño cycle likely won’t peak for months, Goble said.
What’s in store for Colorado?
When El Niño is present, weather patterns tend to be wetter over much of Colorado in a statistically significant way, Goble said, based on the Colorado Climate Center’s analysis of ENSO events in Colorado.
The El Niño can lead to slow-moving weather systems that drop rain or snow on landlocked Colorado.
But the effects vary by region. The Northern Rockies tend to be wetter in fall and spring, but drier in the midwinter months during an El Niño cycle.
Western Colorado falls in an in-between area — there’s a 50-50 chance that it would be a wetter or drier year than usual, said Erin Walter, a service hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Junction. It’s a wait-and-see situation.
“I know people rely on El Niño, especially for agriculture and for recreation,” Walter said. “The snowfall in our winter is incredibly important. So I understand why there’s the hype and the desire to know what could happen.”
Climate and weather experts don’t know whether the strength of the El Niño cycle matters, Goble said. They don’t have enough data to show a clear link.
Experts have recorded super El Niño conditions in three years, 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16.
Colorado saw more precipitation than usual in the fall during two of the three years, Goble said. Some years, like 1982, had a colder fall than others. Recent El Niño years, like 2019, were good snow years, but that doesn’t always happen.
“It’s not as well correlated with peak seasonal snowpack as we’d like,” Goble said.
It’s also difficult to look at an individual storm and say it was driven by the El Niño conditions. But there are some signs to look for, like splits in the jet stream and slow-moving low pressure systems that originate farther south than usual.
As for the storms that have swept across the state so far this summer? Goble didn’t think any have been caused by the El Niño conditions. The recent weather storms have had more to do with the North American Monsoon, which brings continuous moisture into the Southwest because of a shift in wind patterns, he said.
“Thus far I haven’t seen a real clear calling card of El Niño on Colorado’s weather,” Goble said.
This story first appeared on The Colorado Sun.
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