A view of the super El Niño as it continues to form, taken Feb. 16, 2026. The darker the color red, the higher the ocean temperature. Image courtesy of NOAA.
Here Comes a Super El Niño
The global climate patterns shifting in from over the Pacific Ocean moving from West to East periodically shift between what is called a “La Nina” to an ” El Niño”. Normally, the difference between these two can mean more or less snow, a few more or less storms, sometimes a hotter summer than normal.
This year is different. Climatologists and weather predictors are telling us to prepare for what is being called a super El Niño, which could arrive by late summer.
If it forms as expected, this El Niño is expected to redraw global weather maps, whipping up torrential rain events and flooding for some, and “biblical” drought and wildfires for others, causing mass crises around the globe. Oh, and as if extreme weather isn’t enough, this El Niño is expected to simultaneously speed up the pace of global warming.
Before considering what that is, first a snippet of history: A super El Niño, the largest in history, wiped out millions of people in the years 1877-1878. The extreme weather experienced during that climate phenomenon, between storms, hurricanes, floods, droughts, displacement and crop failures wiped out between three and four percent of the global population.
Are we better prepared now?
That question may have more than one answer.
There have been about six super El Niños since 1850. On the one hand, a lot has changed since the 1877 super event; what might have been the worst environmental disaster in human history. Earth’s inhabitants of 1877 didn’t know it was coming. They had no warning.
We know, and we’ve been warned.
On the other hand, this time, the super El Niño headed our direction is being fueled by much warmer ocean temperatures; temperatures that have risen a few more degrees than even the 1982-1983 super El Niño, which prompted better scientific tracking of the phenomenon.
There are now around 4,000 temperature tracking buoys out across the oceans, tracking water temperatures. So we know the oceans are heating up.
The planet has had the 11 hottest recorded temperatures just in the past 11 years. The oceans have been absorbing the global temperature increases. How much they can take — no one knows.
According to NOAA (U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), this year ocean temperatures across the east-central tropical Pacific (that’s the America’s, folks) could surge another 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. Yes, this would be a record-breaking climate shift. Our altitude here in the Arkansas River Valley is no guarantee that we’d be protected. In fact, we’re in the path east of California.
When something as bad as this El Nino arrived last time, people died due to the extremes — particularly from the impact on the global food supply. What we do this time, having been for-warned, is up to us, perhaps locally.