La Nina dissipates in equatorial Pacific: NOAA

NEW YORK (Reuters) - La Nina has mostly dissipated in the Pacific Ocean and normal weather should prevail into the fall, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday.

"A transition from La Nina to ... neutral conditions occurred during June 2008, as sea surface temperatures returned to near-average across the central and east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean," the CPC said in its monthly update.

La Nina means "little girl" in Spanish and usually results in cooler-than-normal water in the Pacific that helps hurricanes form in the Atlantic basin by suppressing wind shear which tears embryonic storms apart.

The more famous El Nino anomaly causes waters in the Pacific to turn abnormally warm and its encouragement of wind shear was said to hinder Atlantic storms which would sweep into the Gulf of Mexico and disrupt oil and gas production in the area.

CPC said La Nina "continues to linger in the atmospheric circulation, but with diminishing strength."

It said normal weather may persist into the northern hemisphere winter of 2008/09.

But, CPC cautioned, "The possible development of El Nino or La Nina cannot be ruled out due to uncertainty in model forecasts and because (both) events often form during the second half of the year."

Scientists have observed that El Nino and La Nina would often follow one after the other in the central Pacific.

El Nino is more notorious and was named after the Christ child because it was first noticed by Latin American anchovy fishermen in the 19th Century.