By Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo
BEIJING (Reuters) - Temperatures in northern&nbsp;China&nbsp;are&nbsp;set&nbsp;to plunge as much as 20 degrees Celsius after the second-warmest October in decades, but&nbsp;warmer-than-usual conditions could soon be back under the influence of El Nino.
A stream of cold air entering&nbsp;China&nbsp;on Saturday&nbsp;from&nbsp;the northwest will join one that arrived on Thursday to push temperatures sharply lower, the&nbsp;China&nbsp;Meteorological Administration (CMA) said.
In the sparsely populated deserts and grasslands of the northern Inner Mongolia region, temperatures could plummet on Friday and again&nbsp;from&nbsp;Saturday while blizzards could hit the Xinjiang region in the northwest.
From&nbsp;next week, most of the northeast is expected to see maximum temperatures dive to the single-digits or below&nbsp;freezing&nbsp;as cold air moves east and south, in an abrupt reversal of a recent "big&nbsp;warming", the CMA said.
While&nbsp;freezing&nbsp;temperatures are not uncommon for the time of&nbsp;year, the&nbsp;sudden&nbsp;change&nbsp;is unusual.
A few days ago, uncharacteristically&nbsp;warm&nbsp;weather&nbsp;saw parts of northern&nbsp;China&nbsp;post record high temperatures exceeding 30C.
Weather&nbsp;has become more&nbsp;extreme&nbsp;in&nbsp;China&nbsp;in recent&nbsp;years, destroying urban infrastructure as well as farmland, causing hefty economic losses and raising fears about the pace and impact of global&nbsp;warming.
This summer, typhoons dumped historic rainfall in inland regions unaccustomed to tropical storms. Typhoon Doksuri caused the worst flooding since 1963 in the Hai river basin that encompasses Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province.
Authorities are due to issue 1 trillion yuan ($137 billion) of sovereign bonds to help rebuild areas hit by the floods and improve infrastructure to cope with disasters.
Earlier in the&nbsp;year, northern&nbsp;China&nbsp;basked in unseasonal heat, with temperatures reaching summer-levels, shortly after a very cold January, when the northernmost city of Mohe saw the temperature dip to a record minus 53C.
Winter this&nbsp;year, however, could be&nbsp;warmer due to a moderate El Nino, Jia Xiaolong, deputy director of&nbsp;China's National Climate Centre, told a press conference on Friday.
El Nino is a natural climate pattern associated with&nbsp;warming of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific. The phenomenon occurs every two to seven&nbsp;years, lasting nine to 12 months.
"The sea surface temperature in the east-central equatorial Pacific will continue to exceed 0.5C in November, and the El Nino event will persist in the 2023/2024 winter, with a peak intensity of 1.5-2C," Jia said.
But statistics showed that winter temperatures could fluctuate greatly during El Nino, Jia warned.
($1 = 7.3127 Chinese yuan renminbi)
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(Reporting by Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel)

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China set for sudden change from warm to freezing in year of extreme weather