El Niño is here, it is strengthening and will almost certainly remain with us until at least February 2027. This is according to the latest update from the World Meteorological Organization of the United Nations.
The forecasts of the main international climate centers indicate a probability close to 100% that the phenomenon will persist in the coming months, a degree of certainty that the WMO had never expressed so clearly in its bulletins on El Niño and La Niña.
The reason is the exceptionally warm tropical Pacific waters. Oceanic and atmospheric signals are all trending in the same direction and indicate that El Niño will continue to intensify, likely reaching a very strong phase towards the end of 2026. Its effects, however, could continue well beyond the peak, influencing global climate well into 2027.
El Niño is a natural climatic phenomenon linked to the anomalous increase in surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. It is part of ENSO, the oscillation that alternates warm phases, El Niño, with cold phases, La Niña. But what happens in an apparently very distant portion of the ocean does not remain confined there. The tropical Pacific is one of the great drivers of the Earth’s climate and its variations can modify atmospheric circulation, shift rainfall, alter temperatures and change the behavior of the seasons thousands of kilometers away.
A very strong El Niño can therefore increase the risk of drought in some regions, torrential rain and floods in others, as well as higher temperatures in many areas of the planet.
El Niño is natural, global warming is not
The rapid rise in temperatures we witness today is primarily caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. When these two elements overlap, the risk is to add a further temporary boost to a planet that is already starting from exceptionally hot conditions.
For the coming months, WMO models show an increased likelihood of above-normal temperatures across much of land. Precipitation is also expected to show the typical imprint of a strong El Niño, although the effects will vary greatly from one region to another. Saying that El Niño will be “very strong”, in fact, does not mean that the same extreme events will occur everywhere. Impacts depend on season, geographic location, and interaction with other large climate systems.
@WMO
This year, for example, the Indian Ocean Dipole also comes into play, while the tropical waters of the Atlantic remain warmer than normal. It is precisely this overlap of factors that makes the picture even more delicate. The climate, after all, is not an on or off switch: it is a network of balances that influence each other, and we are simultaneously altering many of its components.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres spoke of an El Niño that is “magnifying before our eyes” and of a planet entering “uncharted waters”. Sea surface temperatures continue to rise, as do atmospheric temperatures, and this means more energy available for some extreme events. It is not a question of predicting a single flood or a single heat wave, but of understanding that we are increasing the probability that certain events will become more frequent, more intense or more difficult to manage.
What should be clear, then, is that El Niño is not climate change, but comes in an already warmer world, with oceans accumulating enormous amounts of heat and with ecosystems and societies increasingly vulnerable to extremes. It’s like adding another boost to a system that’s already under pressure.
The good news, if we want to find one, is that knowing what’s coming in advance allows you to prepare better. Warning systems, resilient infrastructure, heat plans, more careful water management and greater crop protection can save lives and reduce damage.
But preparing for the effects without addressing their causes cannot be enough. Because we can learn to live with El Niño. We cannot continue to think that we can live indefinitely with an increasingly hotter planet.
