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El Niño is back, and it might be bigger than ever before.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared in June that the threshold for an El Niño had been met in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and that it was likely to strengthen significantly through the end of the year. Since then, the numbers that drive El Niño have been on full throttle. The strongest El Niño on record is not out of the question, potentially even by a wide margin.
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This oceanic pattern, which typically alters global weather, has in the past been associated with intense California flooding, fewer hurricanes in the southeast, dramatically warmer winters for the northern U.S., and intense drought in other parts of the world.
And it may be a preview of a new climate that is unfolding before our eyes. Even moderate El Niños temporarily warm global temperatures; a strong El Niño alongside the backdrop of climate change will likely push global heat records to new heights.
What is El Niño?
At its core, El Niño is about warm water. Every two to seven years, sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean along the equator rise well above normal, setting off a chain reaction that reshapes weather patterns around the globe.
Under normal conditions, steady trade winds blow from east to west along the equator, pushing warm surface water toward Indonesia.
These west Pacific waters are normally the hottest in the world.
Cooler, nutrient-rich water wells up from the deep ocean along the coast of South America. The tropical water there tends to be cooler.
This is a view of sea surface temperatures earlier this year.
During an El Niño, those trade winds weaken or even reverse. Warm water sloshes eastward across thousands of miles of open ocean, and the cold upwelling off Ecuador slows or shuts down entirely.
The surface of the tropical Pacific transforms from a cool spot into a massive pool of anomalous warmth thousands of miles across.
This is the same view from late July. Sea surface temperatures along the equator, where there is no cold or warm season, have surged.
The warm water heats the air above it, fueling more thunderstorms, lowering atmospheric pressure and altering the arrangement of pressure systems and the jet stream worldwide.
As of late July, temperatures in the Nino 3.4 region, where scientists measure the strength of El Niño, were running 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 degrees Celsius) above normal. A strong El Niño is already in place.
Some forecast models indicate that this anomaly could reach up to 8 degrees Fahrenheit or more this winter, which would potentially make it the strongest ever on record.
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The anomaly is even more pronounced beneath the waves. Taking a vertical slice of the ocean along the equator, the heat becomes extreme a few hundred feet down. A persistent supply of warm water is here.
For the western U.S., a strong El Niño typically pulls the Pacific jet stream southward, bending it across California and the desert Southwest instead of its usual track through the Pacific Northwest. The result is a fundamentally different winter weather pattern – one primed for weeks of relentless storms and atmospheric rivers.
Further north and east, the polar jet stream rises north, raising temperatures across most of the northern U.S. and drying out the Ohio River Valley. Meanwhile, more rain arrives for the southeast despite a usually below-average hurricane season.
El Niño events typically develop in spring and summer, peak in intensity between October and February, and persist for nine to 12 months, though some have lingered for two years. They are one half of a larger climate cycle — the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO — whose cool phase, La Niña, tends to bring drier conditions to the southern United States and wetter weather to the Pacific Northwest.
Why this El Niño could be historic
The current numbers coming out of the tropical Pacific are startling. The Oceanic Niño 3.4 Index — the sea surface temperatures in an area of the ocean along the equator south of Hawaii and the standard measure of El Niño intensity — have surged to +2.3 degrees Celsius as of late July, having climbed from +0.48 degrees Celsius in April. This alone would make it the third or fourth most intense El Niño over the past 40 years, with more strengthening expected. Meanwhile, the upper-ocean heat content fueling this event is nearly double what was observed at the same point during the development of the 2023 El Niño.
This is reflected in NOAA’s own forecasting, where the most recent outputs peg the index rising to around an astounding +4.5 degrees Celsius — completely unprecedented in modern history. The prior strongest on record in 2015 was +2.75 degrees Celsius. As of July, NOAA puts the odds of a very strong El Niño by October–December at 81%.
An El Niño of this magnitude is likely to produce more intense versions of its global climatic effects and bring with it the risk of completely new climatic developments. Worldwide weather patterns — wet or dry — may trend toward the extreme.
El Niño can temporarily warm global temperatures by about half a degree Celsius. When adding this atop human-induced climate change, which has warmed the Earth by around +1.5 degrees Celsius, the result could be global temperatures that break records set during the 2023-24 El Niño — the warmest period in recorded human history.
Sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region reflect this extreme warning too, and are now more than 5.4 standard deviations above average for this time of year — a statistical anomaly expected roughly once every 30 million years under normal conditions. Of course, climate change has tipped the scales, as these are not in normal conditions. This is not a number that should exist under the climate conditions that the statistical baseline was built on.
It is for this reason that NOAA now considers a newer metric known as the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, which accounts for long-term warming in the tropics. Even from this vantage point, current forecasts still point to an event that rivals the strongest ever observed.
El Niño is still ripping. Even the relative index is expecting an uptick in warmth to between +3.5-4 C peaking around October/November. It would seem we are about halfway to peak-strength. #ElNiño pic.twitter.com/EPtsTHSkfP
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— Sean Macaday (@MacadayWX) August 3, 2026