Weather experts said Tuesday that El Nino, the weather anomaly that wreaks havoc around the Pacific and east Africa, has peaked and would disappear by mid-year.
"The most likely outcome by mid-year 2010 is for the El Nino event to have decayed and near-neutral conditions to be re-established across the tropical Pacific," said the World Meteorological Organisation expert Rupa Koumar Kolli.
El Nino is an occasional seasonal warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that upsets normal weather patterns from the western seaboard of Latin America to east Africa.
According to the UN weather agency, the climate phenomenon may have peaked in November or December.
However, its effects should still be felt through April to June.
"This is because impacts on many climate patterns both close to and remote from the Pacific, can occur even during the decay phase of an El Nino event."
Kolli said that this year's El Nino had a major impact in extreme climate events such as monsoons in southeast Asia and drought in southern Australia.
In February, the Philippines warned that its farming industry could lose about 433 million dollars due to a drought caused by El Nino.
Meanwhile in the Americas, El Nino was blamed for blizzards in the United States, heatwaves in Brazil, killer floods in Mexico and drought in Ecuador which occurred in February.
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