{"id":1107551,"date":"2026-07-24T00:23:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T00:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1107551\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T00:23:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T00:23:21","slug":"this-el-nino-is-set-to-be-the-largest-on-record-by-a-mind-blowing-margin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1107551\/","title":{"rendered":"This El Ni\u00f1o is set to be the largest on record by a \u2018mind-blowing margin\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The El Ni\u00f1o climate pattern<\/a> that is strengthening in the Pacific Ocean is on track to be the largest one in at least 150 years, researchers said today during a press briefing. If the monster forecasts they presented pan out, the surge of heat that the El Ni\u00f1o will unleash from the ocean, combined with warming from human-caused climate change, will probably make next year the hottest on record \u2014 and cue up extreme weather in many parts of the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Oceans in Asia smash heat records \u2014 what it means for extreme weather<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the projections from a suite of climate models, the peak of this El Ni\u00f1o is set to surpass the previous record-holder by \u201ctruly, a mind-blowing margin\u201d, says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit research organization in California that hosted the briefing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201cnot outside the realm of possibility\u201d that the event could combine with climate change to raise global average temperatures in 2027 as high as 1.7\u00b0C above the pre-industrial average, he said at the briefing. This would bring the planet right to the edge of breaching the 1.5\u00b0C threshold<\/a> that governments pledged to avoid under the Paris Agreement.<\/p>\n

The fact that an El Ni\u00f1o is occurring now isn\u2019t surprising. The El Ni\u00f1o\u2013Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a natural fluctuation in sea surface temperature and winds in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Historically, it has swung between hot El Ni\u00f1os and cool La Ni\u00f1as every two to seven years. The last El Ni\u00f1o took place in 2023\u201324 and, after forecasters had warned of a big event<\/a> looming, this year\u2019s emerged in June.<\/p>\n

But the latest predictions suggest that this El Ni\u00f1o could become even bigger than anticipated. According to Justin Mankin, a climate researcher at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, it looks a lot like the ones that scientists had projected being amplified by human-caused climate change later this century.<\/p>\n

Extreme forecasts<\/p>\n

The elevated Pacific sea surface temperatures and wind patterns that are the hallmark of an El Ni\u00f1o have rapidly strengthened since June. In its latest advisory<\/a>, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) gave a four in five chance of a \u201cvery strong\u201d event developing by the end of the year, with near certainty that El Ni\u00f1o conditions will persist until at least April 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we\u2019re seeing all the markers of very vigorous atmosphere\u2013ocean coupling across the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which is giving us more confidence we will ultimately see a \u2018very strong\u2019 El Ni\u00f1o that would rank among the strongest El Ni\u00f1os in our historical record,\u201d says Michelle L\u2019Heureux, a meteorologist at NOAA who leads the agency\u2019s ENSO prediction team in College Park, Maryland.<\/p>\n

The NOAA forecast could be conservative, however. In a blog post last week<\/a> and during the briefing today, Hausfather compared the projections from 14 climate models for this El Ni\u00f1o, and showed that the median estimate for peak sea surface temperature in the Pacific is about 0.8\u00b0C higher than the previous record set in 2015\u201316 (see \u2018Record breaker\u2019). \u201cIt\u2019s by no means a foregone conclusion, but the likelihood has risen month over month,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"RECORD<\/p>\n

Source: Zeke Hausfather<\/a>\/Berkeley Earth<\/p>\n

In addition to the El Ni\u00f1o event raising global average temperatures to record highs in 2027, Hausfather says that there\u2019s a fair chance that it will boost temperatures enough in the next few months to make 2026 a record hot year, too. The pattern of heatwaves, droughts, flooding and wildfires associated with El Ni\u00f1o will also have consequences for economies. Mankin and his colleagues have estimated1<\/a> that changes in weather attributed to a strong El Ni\u00f1o in 1997\u201398 shrank global economic growth by US$5.7 trillion in the years that followed.<\/p>\n

If the forecasts are anything near correct, the current El Ni\u00f1o could cause \u201c$10 trillion in economic losses by 2032\u201d, Mankin says. Beyond impacts on human society, this El Ni\u00f1o is likely to stress ecosystems and oceans, driving declines in the net amount of carbon they take up from the atmosphere. Elevated ocean temperatures are also bad news for coral reefs bleached by the heat<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The El Ni\u00f1o climate pattern that is strengthening in the Pacific Ocean is on track to be the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1107552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[2311,16476,3965,3966,12,16477,70,26],"class_list":["post-1107551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-sciences","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-news","tag-ocean-sciences","tag-science","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116972106966617918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1107551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1107552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}