La Nina fading and neutral conditions to emerge starting March, U.S. forecaster says

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Feb 13 (Reuters) - La Nina conditions are present and are expected to persist in the near-term, with a 66% chance of transition to ENSO-neutral conditions during March-May 2025, a U.S. government forecaster said on Thursday.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

La Nina is a phenomenon which is part of the larger El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climatic cycle involving water temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

While La Nina causes cooler-than-average temperatures, raising chances of both floods and droughts and thereby affecting crops, ENSO neutral means that the water temperature remains near the average level and crop yields may be more stable.

CONTEXT

Earlier this week, Japan's weather bureau said that there were no clear indications of El Nino or La Nina events, although La Nina characteristics were becoming evident.

The bureau added that there was a 60% likelihood of ordinary weather patterns continuing towards the summer.

"La Niña conditions are expected to persist through the Feb-Mar-Apr 2025 season with odds of 59%, followed by a nearly equally likely transition to ENSO-neutral starting in Mar-Apr-May 2025," the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said in its monthly forecast.

KEY QUOTES

"The La Nina pattern typically results in better rains and improved crop production for corn in South Africa, wheat, sorghum, cotton, and sugarcane in Australia, palm oil in Southeast Asia, and a better monsoon season in India, which we saw last summer," said Donald Keeney, senior agricultural meteorologist at Maxar.

"There are typically drier conditions and lower crop production across southern Brazil and Argentina this season, moreover, there are drier conditions in the southern tier of the U.S., which could impact winter wheat production," Keeney added.