UMD-Led Research Yields Key to Better Predictions of El Niño

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- A University of Maryland scientist and an undergraduate Indian student he mentored in India have uncovered a major new finding about El Niño -- the cyclical climate event that appears every 2-7 years, sometimes with major global weather impacts such as massive flooding in some regions and severe droughts in others and resulting major economic impacts. Just published in Nature Climate Change, their research reveals a previously unrecognized sign of a looming El Niño that can be detected up to 18 months in advance, nine months earlier than current forecasting models