(Reuters) - Chances of the emergence of the El Nino weather pattern have increased to 65 percent during the fall and 70 percent during winter 2018-19, a U.S. government weather forecaster said on Thursday.
The last El Niño, a pattern that brings a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific every few years, was linked to crop damage, fires and flash floods before it went away in 2016.
"The forecaster consensus favors the onset of El Niño during the Northern Hemisphere fall, which would then continue through winter," the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said in a monthly forecast.
Last month, the weather forecaster put the chances of El Nino emerging at 50 percent during the fall and 65 percent during the winter.
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Neutral conditions are likely to prevail through the northern hemisphere this summer, the report said.
Neutral refers to those periods in which neither El Niño nor La Niña is present.
(Reporting by Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
