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According to some great posts on this forum, A strong Nino is always followed by a La Nina.... so when do you think this will happen?
Our Currently Strong Nino is weakening but we have to get a neutral state first before even dropping into La Nina territory and then stay there before even claiming it to be La Nina. Doesn't happen fast but has some years.
Here are years since 1950 that had the Nino-Nina flip
The Niño-Niña flips were quite gradual for the Niñas starting in 1983-4, summer 1988, and 1995-6. The Niño-Niña flips were extremely abrupt during Spring 1973, Summer 2007 and Spring 2010. The others were somewhere in between. I suspect we are in a long-term cold cycle that began with the end of the last warm cycle in Spring-Summer 2007. The reverse of the "great Pacific shift" of 1976-7. During the warm cycle the flips to Niña are gradual and may barely get beyond cold-neutral. Good examples of those were 1980-1, 1983-4, 1995-6 and 2005-6.
An outlier was the the 1988-9 Niña, which was strong, but extremely brief. That one started slowly, with a gradual decay of the 1986-8 Niño. When the drop into Niña became pronounced it gave us the epic hot summer of 1988 (the one that spawned the "greenhouse" testi-lying of Hansen) and to a lesser extent allowed 1987 to be a fairly hot summer.
The rapid plunges from Niño to Niña in 1973, 2007 and 2010 gave us exceeding hot late summer periods and even, in the case of 1973 and 2010 epic heat earlier during the summer. June 1973 had some record heat in New York City. July 2010 had two 100+ days during July 2010 and another late July heat wave. Both 1973 and 2010 (as well as 1953, which I know less about) had upper 90's (and in some cases better) during the transition from August into September. 2007's heat was, strangely, in late September into mid-October. Columbus Day crested at 87 and later that week remained over 80.
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