La Nina conditions to prevail through summer, says U.S. weather forecaster

(Reuters) - There is a 53% chance of La Nina conditions during June-August 2022 continuing during the Northern Hemisphere summer, a U.S. government weather forecaster said on Thursday.

The La Nina weather pattern is characterized by unusually cold weather in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

There was a "40-50% chance of La Nina or ENSO-neutral thereafter," the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said in its monthly forecast.

"The forecaster consensus favors a slower decay of La Nina due to the recent renewal of ocean-atmosphere coupling, which contributed to cooler near-term forecasts," it added.

The El Nino pattern brings a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific every few years, and is the opposite of La Nina.

(Reporting by Seher Dareen and Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru)