Of course, this is a spectacular year since its been a while since there have been a La niña sandwiched between 2 el Niño events, contiguously. Not sure when that happened last.
2014-16, 1986-88 and 1957-59 since 1950 [1]. (Before that, 1913-14 and 1940-42 [2].)
[1] https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitorin...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño#cite_note-BoM_El_Nino-...
2016 in particular is a recent and next-to-last el Niño event, and its one that i would have expected to remember / know more about.
But clearly i did not
Sea water temp changes the air temp above it. A big enough change will clash with existing air above.it, and the interaction of those 2 causes jet streams.
I'm open minded as to believing those are mutually exclusive but reading doesnt suggest that at all
In the UK, you probably hear about the Gulf Stream a lot.
I wander if this is related to the abnormally warm North Atlantic sea surface temperatures.
I think this is correct [1]. Whether they are separate names for the same or related phenomenon, or separate (but analogous) phenomena, I don't know.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño–Southern_Oscillation
El Niño is a warming of the water in the North Pacific that sometimes happens and sometimes isn't. It has an outsized impact on the weather in the Western US.
The Gulf Stream is a current in the North Atlantic that brings warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic, where it has an outsized impact on the climate in Europe.