NOAA released their March 2023 El Niño forecast. The highlights from this are that the La Niña has officially ended and we are now headed into ENSO-neutral conditions with early signs of the El Niño forming A-M-J.

They do say the following:

“ However, it is possible that strong warming near South America may portend a more rapid evolution toward El Niño and will be closely monitored.”

Full bulletin here: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.pdf

The reason we are watching the development of the El Niño closely are the projections from many scientists on the impact of this event. Eg Hansen et al:

“Even a little futz of an El Nino – like the tropical warming in 2018-19, which barely qualified as an El Nino – should be sufficient for record global temperature. A classical, strong El Nino in 2023-24 could push global temperature to about +1.5°C relative to the 1880-1920 mean, which is our estimate of preindustrial temperature.”