Les nouvelles

GENEVA -- The El Nino weather pattern warming the Pacific Ocean since June, has peaked, but is expected to influence climate patterns worldwide up to mid-year before dying out, the World Meteorological Organisation said on Tuesday.

However, the United Nations agency said that forecasting uncertainties meant it could not rule out the possibility that El Nino would persisting beyond mid-year.

El Nino, driven by an abnormal warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, can create havoc in weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region, unleashing droughts in some places and heavy storms in others.

"The most likely outcome by mid-2010 is for the El Nino event to have decayed and near-neutral conditions to be re-established across the tropical Pacific," WMO climate scientist Rupa Kumar Kolli told a news briefing.

The WMO said the current El Nino, which can occur every two-seven years, had peaked in November-December at a moderate level.

El Nino typically creates dry conditions for western areas along the Pacific Ocean such as South East Asia and Indonesia, and southern parts of western Australia, and wetter than normal conditions in western coastal areas of South America, he said.

"Even during the decaying phase of the El Nino, expected over the next few months, the conditions associated with a typical El Nino will continue to influence climatic patterns at least through the second quarter of the year," Kolli said.

However, the phenomenon, which means "little boy" in Spanish, referring to the Christ child because it is often noticed mostly clearly in Latin America around Christmas, is also linked to a weaker than normal hurricane season in the northern Atlantic, according to the WMO expert.

Kolli said the opposite cooling phenomenon, known as La Nina, or "little girl," could start in the middle of this year.