Although its impacts on the weather still reverberate, El Niño has now officially gone bye bye

In January, above average sea surface temperatures projected like a spear along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean — a hallmark of El Niño. Since then, the warmth has given way to cooler than normal temperatures. (Images: earth.nullschool.net. Animation: Tom Yulsman) If you live in Texas — or Indonesia, for that matter — it might be difficult to believe, but El Niño truly has gone away. Record-setting rainfall has recently caused devastating floods in Texas. Meanwhile, drought continues in parts of Southeast Asia. And both have been linked to lingering impacts of El Niño on atmospheric circulation patterns. But as the animation above illustrates, January's warm spear of sea surface waters in the equatorial Pacific — a hallmark of El Niño — has now given way to cooler than average temperatures. This heralds the official end of El Niño, according to the latest monthly update from the ...