El Nino to persist until spring 2007, federal scientists report*

Updated 10/7/2006 4:53 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) — El Nino, a climate pattern that can wreak havoc
around the world, will stay at least until spring 2007, a monthly report
by the Climate Prediction Center said Thursday.

The CPC, an agency of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration,
said on its website that El Nino will stay "for the remainder of 2006
and into the northern hemisphere spring of 2007."

El Nino is an abnormal warming of waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean
which causes wild swings in weather from Asia to South America — causing
searing drought in some and rampant flooding in others.

El Nino means 'little boy' in Spanish. The phenomenon was given the name
by its first observers, South American anchovy fishermen in the 19th
century, because it normally peaked around Christmas.

The CPC said "typical" El Nino effects are likely to develop over North
America during the winter.

This would include "warmer-than-average temperatures over western and
central Canada, and over the western and northern USA,
wetter-than-average conditions over portions of the Gulf Coast and
Florida, and drier-than-average conditions in the Ohio Valley and the
Pacific Northwest."

Mild weather over the northern U.S. and Canada would affect the world's
top heating oil market.

Turning its attention to how El Nino would affect other parts of the
world, the report said drier-than-average weather would be likely during
November to March "over most of Malaysia, Indonesia, some of the
U.S.-affiliated islands in the tropical North Pacific, northern South
America and southeastern Africa."

CPC said it should see "wetter-than-average conditions over equatorial
East Africa, central South American (Uruguay, northeastern Argentina,
and southern Brazil) and along the coasts of Ecuador and northern Peru."

The CPC's top El Nino expert, Vernon Kousky, told Reuters this El Nino
will not be as bad as the 1997-98 version which killed hundreds and
caused billions of dollars in damages.