(Reuters) - There is a 70-75 percent chance of the El Niño weather pattern emerging during the northern hemisphere winter this year, a U.S. government weather forecaster said on Thursday.
"The official forecast favors the formation of a weak El Niño," the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said in a monthly forecast.
Last month, the weather forecaster pegged the chances of the El Niño emerging at 50-55 percent during the fall and 65-70 percent during winter 2018-19.
The last El Niño, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that typically occurs every few years, occurred from around 2015 to 2016 and caused weather-related crop damage, fires and flash floods.
(Reporting by Arpan Varghese and Harshith Aranya in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Frances Kerry)
