Journal of Emerging Scholarship

On the tail end of a historic series of La Niña events — starting in 2019 and ending in 2023 — opposing conditions began to coalesce in the southeastern Pacific in early summer 2023. While mechanisms are unpredictable by current understandings of the phenomenon, effects of higher-magnitude El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events are expected to produce higher-magnitude effects globally, measured by various methods of remote analysis. By comparing average climatic data from historic ENSO events against the current timeline, weather and climatic trends share stark, and sometimes startling similarities. 30-year averages (or 30-year normals) are compared against annual weather trend data to find similarities. These trends are expected to aid the extended forecast of the local Mid-Atlantic region during such events. Concurrently, cartographical data is analyzed from the June-August-September (JAS) period comparing actual weather trends to expected trends to examine the oscillation events’ overall ongoing influence. Furthermore, when appropriate economic data from South American nations directly affected by such events is evaluated against event timelines, the resulting trends are expected to further supplement overall ENSO forecasts.