Chapter 1: What is La Niña and how does it affect global weather?
Imagine a force so powerful it can reshape weather across the entire planet. One that floods continents, dries out rainforests, and can even impact whole civilizations. Earth's climate is a delicate balance of orbital mechanics, atmospheric circulation, and seasonal cycles. But every few years, that balance snaps.
The planet lurches into one of two extremes, El Niño or La Niña, the opposing phases of a climate engine called the El Niño Southern Oscillation. This cycle has been influencing Earth for tens of thousands of years, but this time something has changed. The La Nina we're currently experiencing isn't playing by the old rules, and Earth's natural air conditioning unit has a problem.
I'm James Stewart and you're watching Astrum Earth. This is the science behind one of Earth's most powerful climate mechanisms. Join me as we unravel the mystery of La Nina's latest twist.
Chapter 2: Why is the current La Niña different from past events?
We'll explain what La Nina is supposed to do and look at why this time is different and what it means for us. Is this a case of La Nina changing its playbook or have we changed the playing field? To know why something isn't behaving as we expect, we need to know what it is in the first place, so let's start there.
La Niña, which is Spanish for the little girl, and El Niño, Spanish for the boy, are opposite phases of the El Niño Southern Oscillation Cycle, or ENSO for short. Think of the Pacific Ocean like a massive seesaw for climate. This to-and-fro cycle happens every two to seven years, with El Niño or La Niña beginning in June, peaking in December and usually dissipating by April.
This isn't a new thing either. Planet Earth is incredibly resilient, enduring any number of climates in its history, including ENSO. Evidence of its influence reaches deep into the past. Its chemical fingerprints are preserved in ancient coral fossils and sediment cores stretching back tens of thousands of years.
Chapter 3: How do trade winds influence La Niña's effects?
Written accounts of ENSO-related weather patterns date as far back as the 16th century. The in-between, where there is neither an El Niño nor a La Niña, is known as Enso Neutral, a balance between the two, where conditions and temperatures hover around average, preventing the formation of either phenomenon. But that stability doesn't last.
Small shifts in trade winds or ocean surface temperatures can act like a trigger. pushing the planet out of balance, and it doesn't take much. Just a 0.5°C sea surface rise can trigger El Niño, and conversely, when temperatures dip below average, La Niña may develop.
In the case of La Niña, unusually strong easterly trade winds push warm surface water westward toward Asia and Australia, allowing much cooler water to upwell along the coast of South America. The net effect is a large region of cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific.
These ocean changes alter atmospheric circulation, and La Niña strengthens the Pacific Walker circulation, a large atmospheric loop, usually shifting jet streams northward. El Niño and La Niña are in a sort of climate tug of war.
Chapter 4: What are the global impacts of La Niña on rainfall and temperatures?
When one gains the upper hand, different regions around the world feel the pull in opposite ways. Or at least they should. You see, La Nina exposes a larger area of cool ocean water, and it acts almost like a temporary air conditioner for the planet. As a general rule of thumb, therefore, global average temperature often dips slightly during La Nina years compared to El Nino years.
For example, if you look at the historical global temperature graph, strong La Niñas, like from 1999 to 2000 or even 2011, usually interrupt the warming trend a bit. In contrast, a big El Niño, like the one we had in 1998 or even 2016, tends to spike global temperatures to new heights due to all that extra heat being released from the ocean.
It's no surprise, therefore, that La Nina tends to deliver monsoon and tropical rainfall over Indonesia, the Philippines and parts of India, and Australia often sees above-average rain and cooler temperatures, especially in eastern and northern regions.
For the Americas, as the jet stream shifts northward, typically winter storms are pushed toward the Pacific Northwest and Canada, leaving swathes of California drier than average, especially in the south.
It's a similar story in South America too, where the northern parts, Colombia, Venezuela and northern Brazil, are usually wetter, while some central and southern regions experience drier than normal conditions. ENSO's reach is truly global, and its effects are felt everywhere.
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Chapter 5: How is climate change affecting La Niña patterns?
A key insight from recent research in 2025, using NASA's GRACE satellite data, found that La Nina and El Nino act like a global amplifier, shifting water distribution on a planetary scale. Nowhere is safe from its impact. They also found that ENSO has a synchronising effect on water storage extremes across continents.
What this means essentially is that when the Pacific flips, it can simultaneously tip some places into drought and others into floods. That's that seesaw effect we talked about earlier. During the strong 2010-2011 La Nina, Australia, Southeast Brazil and parts of Africa all experienced extreme precipitation at the same time.
Conversely, large El Ninos have caused droughts in disparate regions like South Africa and Amazonia. The study also found a shift over the past decade. Before 2011, wet extremes were more common. But since then, dry extremes have dominated, a sign that ENSO-driven water extremes are already changing.
Chapter 6: What unexpected weather patterns have emerged during the current La Niña?
And that's our first clue. Traditionally, La Nina is nature's brake pedal on global warming. It's a bit of a cool down. But during the most recent cycle from late 2025 and into 2026, where I'm recording this now, something has changed. Not all La Niñas are created equal. Some are roaring strong, others are barely there.
The current La Niña, the one we're experiencing as I write this in January 2026, falls into the latter category. It's relatively weak and expected to be short-lived, like a La Niña Lite, if you will.
Ocean measurements in November 2025 showed only borderline La Nina conditions, with just enough cool water to even meet the threshold, and by early 2026, those cool anomalies have already started to fade.
The World Meteorological Organisation pegged the odds of this La Nina sticking around through February 2026 at only 55%, with nearly as high a chance it would fade back to neutral in the same timeframe.
Chapter 7: What future climate scenarios are predicted following this La Niña?
In fact, by spring 2026, models show a rapid warming below the surface, signalling the collapse of La Nina might already be underway. A burst of westerly winds in the Pacific in January 2026 is actively tearing down the La Nina pattern, a sign that the Pacific is gearing up for a major flip toward El Nino later this year. Why does this matter?
Well, a weak La Nina has a weaker pull on the climate. It's like the difference between a light tap and a hard yank on that climate tug of war rope. When the La Niña signal is weak, other influences can overwhelm or muddy the pattern.
As NASA oceanographer Josh Willis explains, when ENSO events are mild, whether La Niña or El Niño, the usual weather outcomes become notoriously difficult to predict. Not only is it weak, it's also short. And that's a problem. Take Australia, for example.
Chapter 8: How can we better prepare for unpredictable climate events?
According to their Bureau of Meteorology, this 2025 La Nina also formed relatively late in the year, around October time, missing the prime season in the spring, which is when La Nina usually has its biggest effect on Australian rainfall. And then by the Australian summer, its influence was already waning.
In its place, Australia is seeing more of its other climate drivers, like warm Indian Ocean waters and southern hemisphere wind patterns dominating the weather, squashing this weak La Nina like a bug under its shoe. Conversely, in North America, the signature Southern California drought has so far been defied.
Here, La Nina tends to correlate with dry water years, which the National Weather Service defines as from October 1st to September 30th. In fact, out of 25 La Ninas since 1954, 15 have brought drier-than-normal conditions to California. However, by December 2025, California experienced some record-breaking rain.
In fact, there was so much of the wet stuff that it helped to put out some of the remnants of the autumn fire season and even started to refill reservoirs previously left dry. It was so unexpected, it prompted the Los Angeles Times to ask, what's La Nina? In summary, the goalposts have shifted. Something has changed. This La Nina came late.
It isn't very strong and it won't stick around for very long. And whilst that might sound quite positive and bring short-term gains, in California at least, the longer-term implications around the world are far more concerning. You know what else is concerning? All of my personal data just floating around out there online, waiting for pesky data brokers to auction it off to the highest bidder.
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you can get 20% off with my link, joindelete me.com slash Astrum Earth and use code Astrum Earth at checkout. Thanks to Delete Me for sponsoring this video. The link is in the description if you want your digital life a little bit more private as we head back to the video. So why is this change happening?
Well, there are several factors that are rewriting the ENSO script, with the most prominent being, you guessed it, global warming. Perhaps the biggest difference this time, in the case of the 2025 La Nina, is that the baseline climate is warmer. I made an entire video on exactly how much warmer, if you want to check that out, and that changes the game for La Nina.
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