NEW YORK, May 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. government weather forecaster on Thursday heightened its projections for the La Nina weather phenomenon to take place in the Northern Hemisphere later this year, on the heels of an El Nino likely to fade by early summer.
The Climate Prediction Center (CPC), an agency of the National Weather Service, in its monthly forecast pegged the chance of La Nina developing in the fall and winter 2016-17 at 75 percent.
That follows a forecast last month for an increasing chance of La Nina in the second half of the year.
Global forecasters have been increasingly seeing the likelihood for La Nina to emerge this year.
The phenomenon is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It tends to occur unpredictably every two to seven years.
A La Nina tends to deliver a trend toward dry conditions in South America and wetter condtions on the other side of the Pacific, in Australia and India.
