La Niña, cyclic counterpart to El Niño, consists of a cooling of surface waters of the Pacific Ocean along the western coast of South America.

The coupled atmosphere-ocean phenomenon known as El Niño is frequently followed by a period of normal conditions in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Sometimes, but not always, El Niño conditions give way to the other extreme of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. This cold counterpart to El Niño is known as La Niña, Spanish for "the girl child."

Extreme La Niña events that affect weather conditions on both sides of the Pacific will almost double in frequency as the climate warms, a new study shows. Contains link to full research paper.

La Niña is the positive phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, sometimes thought of as the "opposite of El Niño". A La Niña event is indicated by sustained positive Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) values.

The article discusses the El Niño and La Niña climate patterns in Australia. It notes that the climate patterns tend to originate from South American countries located on or near the equator.

In the summer of 2010-2011 Western Australia experienced an unprecedented heatwave — but not on land.

Oceans Institute researcher, Professor Thomas Wernberg and Adjunct Professor Dan Smale predict a not-so-bright future for Western Australian seagrass meadows as frequency of extreme warming events sets to double. Mentions socioeconomic implications.

This report card summarises our current knowledge of marine climate change impacts for Australia, highlighting key knowledge gaps and adaptation responses.

Unprecedented warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies were observed off the west coast of Australia in February–March 2011. Peak SST during a 2-week period were 5°C warmer than normal, causing widespread coral bleaching and fish kills.