El Niño hopes dashed

Earlier forecasts that an El Niño condition might develop by August or September of 2012, thus alleviating the severe drought in the southern U.S., were deflatedwhen the U.S. government’s Climate Prediction Center released a new report this past week.

In the report, forecasters describe how the ocean temperatures across the equatorial Pacific Ocean have gone from below average earlier this year (which would have led to an El Niño), to slightly above average fairly recently. This change, in combination with…