What is La Nina and how will it affect this year's weather?
- Le Tran Huy
- Aug 31, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 17, 2020
In recent years, the world has experienced extreme phenomena that leads to a series of global climate changes. In this post, we are going to discuss one of those phenomena, and how it will affect Vietnam and the world’s weather this year.
La Nina is the name given for the decreasing of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific. There are usually La Nina events every 3 to 5 years, but sometimes they can occur in consecutive years. The changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures will affect the patterns of tropical rainfall from Indonesia to the west coast of South America, which will ultimately affect weather patterns throughout the world. La Nina is usually strongest during the winter months.
La Nina causes extra rainfall in certain areas of the world, such as Southeast Asia and India, thus benefiting the regions’ agricultural production. On the other hand, La Nina is also known for creating extreme natural disasters, like the catastrophic flood in 2010 that took place in Queensland, Australia. It can also create drier conditions in the west coasts of North and South America. This year, La Nina’s possibility of occurrence is as high as 60%.
Vietnam will also likely experience some notable changes of the weather due to the presence of La Nina . Due to the effects of La Nina, in the final months of 2020, the temperature should not be as high as in the recent years. By the end of January 2021, the temperature of most regions in Vietnam will be lower than the yearly average temperature during the same period by 0.5 to 1 degree Celsius. But, according to the vice president of Vietnam’s institute of Meteorology, Hydrology, and Climate Change, La Nina, despite its significant effects, could not always lead to rainfalls and floods in the country, since the climate system here is influenced by several factors, which could easily reduce or increase La Nina’s affection itself.
In conclusion, La Nina is going to cause changes in many areas of the world this year. It is important to monitor and forecast these events in order to predict and prevent natural disasters.
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Author: Le Tran Huy, Foreign Language Specialized School
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