GENEVA: The weather phenomenon La Nina could resurface before the end of 2021, after petering out four months ago, the UN said on Thursday, predicting above-average temperatures despite its generally cooling influence.

The World Meteorological Organisation said that there was now a 40-percent chance that La Nina, which last held the globe in its clutches between August 2020 and May, would reappear again by year-end.

“But despite La Nina’s cooling influence, temperatures over land areas are expected to be above average between September and November, especially in the northern hemisphere,” the UN agency said in a statement. La Nina refers to the large-scale cooling of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, occurring every two to seven years.

The effect has widespread impacts on weather around the world — typically the opposite impacts to the El Nino phenomenon, which has a warming influence on global temperatures.

But WMO warned that global warming is helping to worsen and distort the effects of such natural phenomena.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2021