GENEVA (Reuters) - Cooler than usual Pacific sea-surface temperatures should return to normal in the coming months, and no major La Nina or El Nino events are expected, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.
The United Nations weather agency said that the tropical Pacific Ocean saw temperatures 0.5 degrees Celsius below normal in December, and was now regularizing. La Nina weather results in cooler-than-normal waters in the Pacific Ocean and is believed to spur hurricane formation in the Atlantic basin.
"La Nina-like conditions will most likely dissipate over the next couple of months, returning the tropical Pacific to neutral conditions by March-May 2009," the WMO said in its latest quarterly report.
For the first half of this year, it found that "the likelihood of El Nino conditions developing is no higher than that of La Nina conditions."
The El Nino weather phenomenon results in warmer-than-normal Pacific waters that can wreak havoc in weather patterns. The most devastating was in 1997/98 when it caused major drought in Australia and Indonesia and spawned floods in Peru and Ecuador.
(Reporting by Laura MacInnis; Editing by Louise Ireland)
