The most powerful El Niño in recorded history may be taking shape in the Pacific Ocean, with the world’s leading meteorological agencies warning that the phenomenon is intensifying far faster than any previous event, threatening to unleash a cascade of droughts, floods, coral death, crop failure and surging poverty across virtually every continent before it peaks in December.
“El Niño is firmly established and strengthening rapidly,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo said. “WMO forecasts indicate a near-100 percent likelihood that it will persist through February 2027, potentially being one of the strongest since at least 1950.” Sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific are forecast to increase to record levels during October, November and December 2026, the World Meteorological Organization said in its monthly Global Seasonal Climate Update, adding that the event “will drive weather patterns and impact economies, ecosystems and communities across the globe.”
For the October to December period, the temperature anomaly is forecast to reach approximately 3.7 degrees Celsius above normal which would be the highest since observations began, eclipsing the previous record of 2.6 degrees set in 2015–2016.
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El Niño Global Weather Impacts: What Is El Niño, And Why Is This One So Dangerous?
El Niño is a periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific, driven by the weakening of trade winds. It is the leading natural driver of year-to-year climate variability across the globe. During strong El Niños, global air and ocean temperatures spike and precipitation patterns shift dramatically — flooding rains deluge places that are normally dry, while drought strikes some of the wettest locations on earth. With this El Niño arriving on top of already high global ocean and air temperatures, it carries the potential for extraordinary impacts on millions of lives throughout the world.
The El Niño is expected to peak by year’s end and is unfolding amid accelerating human-caused warming, which amplifies its effects. A warmer atmosphere dries out soil, deepening drought, and holds more moisture, making rains more extreme.
Britain’s Met Office calls the current event “unprecedented” and Japan’s weather agency calls it the strongest ever observed, but US forecasters have not yet declared a record. “By any measure, we are looking at a very strong El Niño,” climate scientist Emily Becker of the University of Miami told AFP, adding that only once it is over will scientists know “where it fits in the context of history.”
El Niño Global Weather Impacts: How Are Coral Reefs Being Threatened With Extinction?
For the world’s coral reefs, the consequences could be irreversible. A super El Niño fuelling record ocean temperatures poses a “terrifying” threat to the world’s fragile coral reefs, marine scientist David Obura, chair of the UN’s expert nature panel IPBES, told AFP. Obura, a Kenyan reef expert, said the exceptional El Niño pattern building strength in the tropical Pacific could drive vulnerable coral species even closer toward extinction.
Obura led a major reassessment of coral health published in the journal Nature that reported a sharp deterioration in reef-building species since the last global census in 2008, writing that “by 2020, nearly half of coral species were at elevated relative risk of extinction” with climate change the main driver of decline.
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