Pacific Ocean’s El Niño Likely to Continue into Summer

Japan’s weather bureau this week said the El Niño weather pattern appeared to be continuing, with a 70-percent chance it would stretch into the northern hemisphere summer.

El Niño is a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that typically happens every few years, sometimes causing crop damage, flash flooding or fires.

The weather bureau said in November that the latest El Niño appeared to have formed.

(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; editing by Joseph Radford)