La Nina climate cycle could last into 2023: UN

The weather phenomenon La Nina, which has affected global temperatures and worsened drought and flooding, will likely continue for months, and possibly even into 2023, the UN warned yesterday.

La Nina refers to the large-scale cooling of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, occurring every two to seven years.

The UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said there was a 70 percent chance that the protracted La Nina event -- which has held the globe in its clutches almost uninterrupted since September 2020 -- will continue until at least August. "Some long-lead predictions even suggest that it might persist into 2023," it said.