The ‘shark’ will soon gobble up La Niña’s cool surface waters. What might this mean for the climate later this year?

It’s not every day that you see an animated graphic like the one above hosted on the website of an ordinarily staid U.S. government agency.

And yes, that is indeed an illustration comparing a complex Earth system phenomenon to, well, a shark.

The comparison comes from the fabulous folks at the ENSO Blog, published under the aegis of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric