El Niño & La Niña around the world

Simple maps

Global map of temperature in El Niño years minus climatology: warm along the equatorial eastern Pacific and over Alaska and western Canada, dotted where significant

El Niño & La Niña Years vs. Normal

How a typical year, season or month differs in El Niño or La Niña years: temperature, rain and snow worldwide, tropical cyclones, and U.S. severe weather.

Correlations

Global map of December–February precipitation fitted for a very strong El Niño: much wetter over the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, drier over Indonesia, northern Australia and the western Pacific

Impacts by El Niño or La Niña Strength

Drag a slider from strong La Niña to strong El Niño and watch the same maps change with the strength of the event.

What are El Niño and La Niña?

The warm and cool phases of a natural cycle in the tropical Pacific Ocean, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Every two to seven years the central and eastern equatorial Pacific warms (El Niño) or cools (La Niña) by a degree or more for several months, usually peaking in the northern winter. That shifts the heaviest tropical rain, and with it the jet streams, so the effects reach far beyond the Pacific.

These maps show what past events did. For the event under way now, see NOAA’s ENSO discussion and seasonal outlooks.