A long-anticipated and dramatic global climate shift has arrived, federal forecasters said June 11 as they confirmed the start of El Niño conditions.

Japan ’s Meteorological Agency (JMA) became the first weather agency to declare the arrival of El Nino on June 11.

The El Nino effect is a natural, cyclical climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean, characterised by the warming of surface ocean temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.