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Historical El Niño and La Niña Events

The definition of El Niño(La Niña) is such that the 5-month running mean Sea Surface Temperature (SST) deviation for NINO.3(5°S-5°N,150°W-90°W) continues 0.5°C(-0.5°C) or higher (lower) for 6 consecutive months or longer. The NINO.3 SST deviation is defined as deviation from the latest sliding 30 year. The SST data set is COBE-SST2 and MGDSST made by JMA.
Winter, spring, summer and autumn mean December to February, March to May, June to August, and September to November, respectively.

El Niño	La Niña
	autumn 1949 - winter 1950/51
summer 1951 - winter 1951/52
spring 1953 - autumn 1953	spring 1954 - summer 1956
spring 1957 - summer 1958
summer 1963 - winter 1963/64	spring 1964 - winter 1964/65
spring 1965 - winter 1965/66	summer 1967 - spring 1968
autumn 1968 - winter 1969/70	spring 1970 - winter 1971/72
spring 1972 - spring 1973	summer 1973 - spring 1974
	spring 1975 - spring 1976
summer 1976 - spring 1977
autumn 1979 - winter 1979/80
spring 1982 - autumn 1983	summer 1984 - summer 1985
autumn 1986 - winter 1987/88	spring 1988 - spring 1989
spring 1991 - summer 1992
spring 1993 - autumn 1993	autumn 1995 - spring 1996
spring 1997 - summer 1998	autumn 1998 - spring 1999
	summer 1999 - spring 2000
spring 2002 - winter 2002/03	summer 2007 - spring 2008
summer 2009 - spring 2010	summer 2010 - spring 2011
spring 2014 - spring 2016	autumn 2017 - spring 2018
autumn 2018 - spring 2019	summer 2020 - spring 2021
	autumn 2021 - winter 2022/23
spring 2023 -

Time series of NINO.3 SST deviation

Thin lines indicates monthly mean values, and smoothed thick curves represents five month running mean values.
Red shaded areas denote El Niño periods, and blue, La Niña ones.
The NINO.3 SST deviation is derived from datasets of MGDSST (Kurihara et al. 2006) after June 2015 and those of COBE-SST2 (Hirahara et al. 2014) before May 2015.

References

Hirahara, S., M. Ishii, and Y. Fukuda, 2014: Centennial-scale sea surface temperature analysis and its uncertainty. J. Climate, 27, 57-75.

Kurihara, Y., T. Sakurai, and T. Kuragano, 2006: Global daily sea surface temperature analysis using data from satellite microwave radiometer, satellite infrared radiometer and in-situ observations. Weather Service Bulletin, 73, Special issue, s1-s18 (in Japanese).