The 2026 El Niño Is Being ‘Supersized’ as Impacts Worsen

CommentSave StorySave this story CommentSave StorySave this story “This is the first time that a WMO El Niño/La Niña Update has been so unequivocal,” the agency says, noting that certainty reflects “the strong agreement within WMO’s extensive network.” El Niño is a naturally occurring weather phenomenon defined by warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific, a pattern that disrupts weather patterns around the world. Scientists have been warning since the start of the year that a particularly strong El Niño was set to develop. The latest forecasts indicate it will be the strongest on record by a wide margin, and impacts are already being felt throughout the world—and they’re likely to intensify in the coming months. “El Niño is being supersized before our eyes,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. “The science leaves no room for doubt: The planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up. Sea surface temperatures are rising, temperatures keep climbing, and the world is in the danger zone of extreme weather.” In addition to affecting regional weather, El Niño also tends to bump up the global average temperature by roughly 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.2 to 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) . But this year’s iteration could provide an even bigger boost. The intensity of this El Niño means this year is likely to be the hottest on record; because it takes a while for the added heat to work through the climate system, 2027 is forecast to be even hotter. This extra warming is a red alert when compounded on top of the warming caused . The UN warned in a separate report issued this week that the world will likely cross 1.5 degrees C of warming over the next few years. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, says this El Niño will be so big, “with consequences that are so large, I’m not sure we fully understand them.” The intensity of the El Niño, Swain says, means that it may cause unexpected and extreme weather, and he cautions against making certain predictions about what, exactly, is going to happen over the next year. But the impacts, he says, will almost certainly be massive. “This is probably one of the larger, if not the largest, climate events—aside from long-term warming, which really isn't a singular event—that anybody alive is potentially ever experiencing,” he says. “That's a very big deal.