El Niño pattern(NOAA / Usplash)What does a “super” El Niño mean for Louisville? LPM’s Bill Burton talked about it with Tawana Andrew.This transcript was edited for clarity and brevity.Bill Burton: It's time for us to take a look at the Science Behind the Forecast as I'm joined by WAVE 3 me teorologist Tawana Andrew.Tawana Andrew: Good morning. Today, we're going to dispel some weather rumors that have been going around recently.BB: People have been talking about a super El Niño. And when I say people, I mean non meteorologists are talking about it. Set us straight about what this super El Niño is.TA: First, we’ve got to break down what an El Niño is. The El Niño and La Niña are the cool and the warm and cool phases respectively of what's called the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. ENSO is a natural climate pattern in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. This is something that we see going on all the time. This cycle shifts every two to seven years. It causes changes in ocean temperatures in that area. It disrupts typical wind patterns and rainfall patterns in that part of the tropic, and eventually you end up with a ripple effect globally.ENSO has three phases. The most well known is El Niño, which is the warming of the tropical Pacific sea temperatures. Then you'll also see the low level winds in the tropics weaken, or in some cases, they'll shift direction. La Niña is the cooling of the sea surface temperatures in that area, and that actually can cause strengthening easterly tropical winds right along the equator. There's also the neutral phase with the sea surface temperatures generally pretty close to average, and sometimes the ocean conditions in the neutral phase can try to mimic El Niño or La Niña. But while the ocean conditions may change, we don't really see that ripple effect in the atmosphere.Some people have been talking about a super El Niño.BB: El Niño on steroids!TA: Basically! With an El Niño, yes, you end up with warming in the ocean in that part of the eastern Pacific. But with a stronger El Niño like what's being predicted? Yes, we're expecting warmer than normal temperatures in that part of the world. But it's important to know that NOAA's Climate Prediction Center only classifies ENSO events as weak, moderate, strong or very strong.BB: We need to get on the phone to them and tell them that we need to have a super category.TA: If they're going to put a super category, it definitely needs to have a cape. But I don't know if they're gonna go that way just yet.We are currently in the ENSO neutral phase. Right now, a lot of climate modeling is predicting a more than 60% probability of El Niño developing between the late spring and summer, and everything is pointing to that being relatively strong. We could see those sea surface temperatures warming about 1.5 degrees Celsius more than usual. That is substantial.However, the super part of it is something that we have to make sure that we're putting into context. We're currently in the time of the year where we have what's called the spring predictability barrier. That barrier is really this period of time at this time of the year. As we're getting from late spring to the summer, the climate models are trying to adapt to change in seasons, so they tend to show a lot more variability than what we actually see. They tend to have a little bit more of diminished accuracy. This is where the actual meteorologists come into play and try to figure out what's going to be happening. ...read more read less