Abnormal warming of water can make the year 2027 the hottest in history.
El Niño could again bring drought, floods and extreme heat to different regions of the world. The so-called warm phase of the climatic cycle in the equatorial Pacific Ocean: the water at the surface becomes warmer than usual, the winds change, and with them the weather changes at great distances from the ocean. The new NOAA forecast gives an 82% probability that El Niño will be formed from May to July 2026. How strong the phenomenon will be is still unknown.
In the spring, the main sign of El Niño appeared in the Pacific: the surface of the water in the central and eastern tropical ocean became warmer than normal. Off the west coast of South America, the deviation in recent weeks has reached about 1 ° C. But for a full-fledged El Niño, there is not a single warm water. The winds also need to change and support warming up, otherwise the ocean signal can quickly weaken.
In the forecast of May 14, NOAA estimates the probability of El Niño from May to July at 82%. By December 2026, the probability rises to 96%. By the strength of the phenomenon, the prognosis is still cautious: no level of intensity has now received more than 37%.
Strong El Niño usually peak from October to February. Therefore, summer observations will be especially important. Meteorologists will monitor the passes, water temperature and the connection between the ocean and the atmosphere. Without this connection, talk of super El Niño will remain premature.
Super El Niño is not a term from the official NOAA scale. This is usually called rare episodes when water in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean becomes at least 2 ° C warmer than normal. The last El Niño of this level fell on 2015-2016. In the NOAA classification for such cases, the category of very strong, that is, a very strong El Niño is used.
The European Center for Medium-LNG Weather Forecasts also allows a strong El Niño, but seasonal models are still diverging. In the April analysis of ECMWF, forecasts for temperature anomaly in the NINO3.4 region for autumn gave from about 1.7 °C to 3.3 ° C. Such a scattering shows that there is no exact assessment of the force of the phenomenon yet.
The previous El Niño of 2023-2024 touched several regions at once. South Africa has faced drought and food shortages, southern Brazil has experienced record flooding, and 2024 was the hottest year on record. In Brazil, after that, forest fires broke out against the backdrop of a record drought.
The new El Niño could further raise the global temperature, especially if the peak is at the end of 2026 and the beginning of 2027. Such phenomena often have a delayed effect: the ocean does not give heat to the atmosphere immediately, so the next year can get an additional temperature push. But one water temperature index cannot be predicted in advance for the consequences for each country. Even a strong El Niño increases the risk of weather anomalies, rather than guaranteeing a specific disaster in a particular region.
Climate change increases risks. El Niño is now developing against the backdrop of already heated oceans and atmosphere. Therefore, heat, evaporation, moisture transfer and extreme precipitation can manifest itself sharper than before. But global warming alone does not make every future El Niño record.
Now meteorologists are waiting for two answers: whether the heating of the water will remain and will the winds change. It is the combination of the warm ocean and the reaction of the atmosphere that turns a short burst of temperature into a full-fledged El Niño. In summer, predictions should be more accurate, and by the autumn it will be clearer whether the world is waiting for a moderate warm episode or a rare event with a deviation from 2 ° C and above.
El Niño could again bring drought, floods and extreme heat to different regions of the world. The so-called warm phase of the climatic cycle in the equatorial Pacific Ocean: the water at the surface becomes warmer than usual, the winds change, and with them the weather changes at great distances from the ocean. The new NOAA forecast gives an 82% probability that El Niño will be formed from May to July 2026. How strong the phenomenon will be is still unknown.
In the spring, the main sign of El Niño appeared in the Pacific: the surface of the water in the central and eastern tropical ocean became warmer than normal. Off the west coast of South America, the deviation in recent weeks has reached about 1 ° C. But for a full-fledged El Niño, there is not a single warm water. The winds also need to change and support warming up, otherwise the ocean signal can quickly weaken.
In the forecast of May 14, NOAA estimates the probability of El Niño from May to July at 82%. By December 2026, the probability rises to 96%. By the strength of the phenomenon, the prognosis is still cautious: no level of intensity has now received more than 37%.
Strong El Niño usually peak from October to February. Therefore, summer observations will be especially important. Meteorologists will monitor the passes, water temperature and the connection between the ocean and the atmosphere. Without this connection, talk of super El Niño will remain premature.
Super El Niño is not a term from the official NOAA scale. This is usually called rare episodes when water in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean becomes at least 2 ° C warmer than normal. The last El Niño of this level fell on 2015-2016. In the NOAA classification for such cases, the category of very strong, that is, a very strong El Niño is used.
The European Center for Medium-LNG Weather Forecasts also allows a strong El Niño, but seasonal models are still diverging. In the April analysis of ECMWF, forecasts for temperature anomaly in the NINO3.4 region for autumn gave from about 1.7 °C to 3.3 ° C. Such a scattering shows that there is no exact assessment of the force of the phenomenon yet.
The previous El Niño of 2023-2024 touched several regions at once. South Africa has faced drought and food shortages, southern Brazil has experienced record flooding, and 2024 was the hottest year on record. In Brazil, after that, forest fires broke out against the backdrop of a record drought.
The new El Niño could further raise the global temperature, especially if the peak is at the end of 2026 and the beginning of 2027. Such phenomena often have a delayed effect: the ocean does not give heat to the atmosphere immediately, so the next year can get an additional temperature push. But one water temperature index cannot be predicted in advance for the consequences for each country. Even a strong El Niño increases the risk of weather anomalies, rather than guaranteeing a specific disaster in a particular region.
Climate change increases risks. El Niño is now developing against the backdrop of already heated oceans and atmosphere. Therefore, heat, evaporation, moisture transfer and extreme precipitation can manifest itself sharper than before. But global warming alone does not make every future El Niño record.
Now meteorologists are waiting for two answers: whether the heating of the water will remain and will the winds change. It is the combination of the warm ocean and the reaction of the atmosphere that turns a short burst of temperature into a full-fledged El Niño. In summer, predictions should be more accurate, and by the autumn it will be clearer whether the world is waiting for a moderate warm episode or a rare event with a deviation from 2 ° C and above.
