MELBOURNE, AUSTRAILIA - If there was any doubt that El Niño was here before, perhaps the addition of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to the list of organizations confirming the weather system will put that doubt to rest.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology joined the U.S. Climate Prediction Center, Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Weather Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in declaring that conditions are strong enough to officially declare El Niño. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is also reporting that this year, El Niño may exacerbate the country's already substantial drought conditions and cause winter frosts to be harsher than average.

As we’ve previously reported, El Niño is a warming of a certain patch of the central Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide, associated with flooding in some places, droughts elsewhere, a generally warmer globe, and fewer Atlantic hurricanes.

While experts were previously reporting that this year’s El Niño will be weak, some are now changing their tune, declaring a more moderate weather system.

"Certainly the models aren't predicting a weak event. They are predicting a moderate-to-strong El Niño event. So this is a proper El Niño event, this is not a weak one or a near miss as we saw last year," David Jones, Manager of Australia’s Climate Monitoring and Prediction at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said. “A significant or substantial event is likely.” 

Chief Meteorologist Todd Crawford at WSI in Andover, Massachusetts, had similar findings. 

“This will be a strong event, perhaps on the magnitude of the last really strong event in 1997-98,” said Crawford. 

We had previously quoted Mike Halpert, Deputy Director for NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, as saying El Niño will be weak this year, but in an interview with CBC News in May he said, ”it's getting close to what we would term moderate," adding that Australia's threshold is 0.3 degrees higher. 

Adam Scaife, Head of Long-Range Forecasting at the UK’s Met Office, adds, “The latest forecasts suggest that at least a moderate event is likely and there is a risk of a substantial event.”

While these predictions are strong and come from reliable sources across the board, most experts realize that Mother Nature is unpredictable, and forecasts could likely change drastically over time.

Many forecasters still aren’t convinced of the strength of this year’s weather system, but they can all agree on the potential effects a strong El Niño might cause.

The El Niño that occurred during the 1982-83 season was the partial cause of droughts and flooding from South America to Australia, costing $8 billion and killing nearly 2,000 people, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency estimated the U.S. economic cost of the 1997-98 El Nino alone was $10 billion, with crops wilting or drowning in the fields and consumers spending $2.2 billion less on heating fuels.

Stay tuned to AndNowUKnow as we continue our coverage of this weather event.