Meteorologists said Thursday that an El Niño has formed in the tropical Pacific and will likely intensify in the coming months, setting off more extreme weather and higher temperatures around the world.
El Niño is the name given to a natural phenomenon that occurs every few years when trade winds shift and the Pacific Ocean warms. It affects weather patterns globally and has the potential to supercharge floods and droughts that are already worsening because of climate change.
Thursday’s declaration by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration means that, technically speaking, temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have held at 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) above the longer-term average for several months, and that scientists have observed atmospheric shifts conducive for an El Niño.
NOAA said there is a 63 percent chance of the sea-surface temperatures climbing 2 degrees Celsius above the norm, making for a “very strong” event.
Many forecasts also suggest this year’s El Niño could reach even higher, beyond 3 degrees Celsius, which would be the largest on record.
“We don’t really have an analog for that,” said Malte Stuecker, the director of the International Pacific Research Center and an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “In a warming world, that would be pretty catastrophic.”
El Niño events typically reach their peak strength during winter in the northern hemisphere, and cause higher temperatures globally into the following year. The previous El Niño, in 2023 and 2024, coincided with the two hottest years on record.
Previous major El Niños have also taken a vast economic toll globally. Though no two events are alike, they raise the likelihood of wet conditions in some parts of the Americans and tend to cause dryness in South and Southeast Asia, Australia, and southern Africa.
For the United States, an El Niño can have an upside, suppressing hurricane season in the Atlantic. But NOAA said that El Niño events can also raise the risk of high tide flooding and algae blooms along the West Coast.
Globally, poorer countries are vulnerable to food shocks and droughts, a risk intensified by preexisting vulnerabilities. This year, those include fertilizer shortages stemming from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as a cutbacks in funding for humanitarian assistance from the United States and others.
An El Niño means “failed rains, dying crops, rising food prices and families pushed to the edge yet again,” said Mohamed Adow, the director of the Nairobi-based climate and energy think tank Power Shift. “In East Africa, especially, this will land on communities already battered by droughts and floods in recent years.”
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