La Niña conditions will prevail through the summer, according to US forecasts.

There is a 53% chance that La Niña conditions will continue through June-August 2022, the northern hemisphere summer, the US government’s weather forecast service said.

The La Niña weather pattern is characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

There was a “40%-50% chance that La Niña or ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) would be neutral thereafter”, said the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) of the National Weather Service in its monthly forecast.

“Forecaster consensus favors a slower decline in La Niña due to recent renewal of ocean-atmosphere coupling, which contributed to cooler near-term forecasts.”, he added.

The El Niño pattern brings a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific every few years, and is the opposite of La Niña.