London: Meteorologists and climate scientists are sounding alarms as a newly emerged El Niño cycle shows a greater than 60 percent chance of intensifying into a “very strong” or “super El Niño” later this year. The naturally occurring climate pattern, which originates with a significant warming of surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, holds the potential to trigger a devastating cascade of extreme weather events worldwide, including severe floods, historic droughts, and intense tropical storms.
The foundational mechanics of El Niño are tied to the behavior of atmospheric pressure and shifting ocean currents. In normal conditions, strong trade winds blow from east to west across the Pacific, pushing warm surface water toward Asia and allowing cold, nutrient-rich water to well up along the South American coast. However, during an El Niño event, these trade winds weaken or entirely reverse. This disruption allows the massive pool of warm water to slosh eastward toward Ecuador and Peru, shifting global weather systems by altering where massive storm clouds form.
Speaking on Weekly podcast, Dr. Ioana Colfescu, a climate and machine learning expert at the University of St. Andrews and the University of Edinburgh, noted that early indicators place the current event on a trajectory mimicking past historic super El Niños. While the 2023–2024 cycle was already documented as one of the top five strongest in recorded history subsequently fueling extreme flooding in Brazil and cementing 2024 as the hottest year on record forecasters stress that the regional responses to these events can vary greatly outside of the tropics.
The primary driver of concern for the 2026 event is its intersection with anthropogenic climate change. Because greenhouse gases have trapped immense amounts of excess heat in the world’s oceans, this newly forming El Niño is overlapping with a baseline ocean temperature that is already unprecedentedly warm. This compounding effect essentially acts as an amplifier, meaning that whatever droughts or storms do materialize over the coming months are likely to be significantly more severe than past historical baselines.