{"id":85884,"date":"2026-07-19T06:47:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T06:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/85884\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T06:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T06:47:14","slug":"how-el-nino-weather-patterns-will-change-the-uk-after-a-month-a-year-and-longer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/85884\/","title":{"rendered":"How El Ni\u00f1o weather patterns will change the UK after a month, a year and longer"},"content":{"rendered":"

An \u201cunprecedented\u201d El Ni\u00f1o<\/a> weather event is forming in the Pacific Ocean, causing ripple effects across the globe.<\/p>\n

For the UK, the climate pattern<\/a> is expected to bring food shortages, prices rises and the chance of an even hotter summer next year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s accelerating faster than it\u2019s ever done in history and it\u2019s predicted to be, by some considerable margin, much bigger than any one we\u2019ve ever had in history to date,\u201d said Professor Tim Benton, <\/p>\n

An El Ni\u00f1o is declared when sea temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific rise to at least 0.5\u00b0C above average. These weather events typically occur once every two to seven years and last nine to 12 months. <\/p>\n

This incoming El Ni\u00f1o is arriving at a time when Europe is already reeling from the effects of extreme weather<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the El Ni\u00f1o will affect the UK in one month, one year and two years.<\/p>\n

One month<\/p>\n

Global weather patterns are heavily affected by a naturally occurring transition between warm and cool weather patterns in the tropical Pacific Ocean, known as El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

The cooler pattern, La Ni\u00f1a, has been dominant since the end of 2024, but the warmer El Ni\u00f1o pattern is now emerging.<\/p>\n

The affects of the El Ni\u00f1o are first felt in the tropical Pacific Ocean along the west coast of South America.<\/p>\n

While it will take some time for this to affect the weather in the UK, it won\u2019t be long until we start to experience the impact of El Ni\u00f1o in other ways. <\/p>\n

\u201cAn El Ni\u00f1o will really affect fisheries off the South American Pacific coast, because it kills things off and it takes a while for them to recover and migrate back in,\u201d explained Dr Lloyd Peck, a marine expert at the British Antarctic Survey. <\/p>\n

Warming ocean temperatures<\/a> are already disrupting a crucial global commodity: South American anchovies.<\/p>\n

These are not the anchovies we eat in a tin, but are primarily used as feed for fisheries. <\/p>\n

Peru, Ecuador and Chile account for roughly a third of the world\u2019s fishmeal production, meaning an anchovy shortage will have an impact on the cost of farmed fish, such as salmon, sea bass and prawns in Britain.<\/p>\n

One year\u00a0<\/p>\n

One year from now is when we\u2019ll start to notice the impact of El Ni\u00f1o on the weather here in the UK. <\/p>\n

As a general rule across the globe, an El Ni\u00f1o \u201cwill make the extremes more extreme\u201d, Peck explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the wet bits will be wetter; we\u2019ll have more floods<\/a> because of it. And the dry things will be drier; it\u2019ll exacerbate things like drought<\/a>, wildfire<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There are many factors that affect the weather here in the UK beyond El Ni\u00f1o, however if next summer does turn out to be a hot one then El Ni\u00f1o will \u201cmake that hot summer probably even warmer\u201d.<\/p>\n

Climate scientists are alarmed that this strong El Ni\u00f1o is happening at a time when climate records are continuously being broken due to the effects of climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had [El Ni\u00f1os] for a long time, and they\u2019ve not really been a problem for us\u2026but what\u2019s happening now is that it\u2019s overlaid on top of [global warming]. It\u2019s reached the point where the extremes now aren\u2019t extremes of 30, 31, 32\u00b0C in the temperatures. They\u2019re extremes of 35, 36, 37, 38\u00b0C,\u201d Peck said.<\/p>\n

So an El Ni\u00f1o could bring a more heightened version of what we\u2019re seeing this summer in Britain, including a spike in heat-related deaths, droughts and wildfires. <\/p>\n

\"SADDLESWORTH,A moorland fire broke out near Manchester this week. Wildfires like this or even worse are probable next year due to the effect of El Ni\u00f1o on an already warm summer (Photo: Ioannis Alexopoulos\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Two years<\/p>\n

The El Ni\u00f1o is also expected to have far reaching ramifications for the world\u2019s food supplies.<\/p>\n

While we could start to see these effects in the coming months, the impact ion food production \u201cplays out over quite a long timescale\u201d, said Benton.<\/p>\n

Analysts at Goldman Sachs have predicted this El Ni\u00f1o could cause a 15.8 per cent surge in food prices, which would not be fully felt in the global economy until the end of 2028. <\/p>\n

Benton said this could translate into price rises of 3-4 per cent in the UK.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s impossible to predict exactly where we will see the biggest price rises, one of the foods most vulnerable to El Ni\u00f1o-related disruption is rice. This is because around 40 per cent of global rice exports come from India, which typically experiences drought in El Ni\u00f1o years. <\/p>\n

Chocolate is also particularly vulnerable to price rises as cocoa production is heavily concentrated in West Africa, which experiences both extreme drought and flooding as a result of El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o patterns also typically reduce global production of palm oil, an extremely common ingredient in ultra-processed foods in the UK.<\/p>\n

Benton points out that this El Ni\u00f1o is coming on top of a \u201clong-running cost of living food price inflation crisis\u201d driven by the wars in Ukraine and Iran, as well as the effects of climate change.<\/p>\n

Most recently, disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has driven up the cost of fertiliser for British farmers by up to 70 per cent, which is expected to have a dramatic impact on food prices<\/a> over the coming year.<\/p>\n

Benton said the thing that is really worrying experts is \u201cthe impact of El Ni\u00f1o over and above it being one of the driest and hottest summers in European history\u201d and \u201cone of the most geopolitically volatile years in recent history\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all of those things together that could have a devastating impact on food prices across the world, he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An \u201cunprecedented\u201d El Ni\u00f1o weather event is forming in the Pacific Ocean, causing ripple effects across the globe.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[24467,24886,1326,23102,3166,5,6],"class_list":["post-85884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-climate-crisis","tag-extreme-weather","tag-food-prices","tag-global-warming","tag-hot-weather","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116945306418223602","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}