The El Niño weather phenomenon emerging in the Pacific Ocean is anticipated to be among the strongest ever recorded, with the capacity to cause widespread floods, droughts, extreme heat, and significant agricultural damage globally. The World Meteorological Organization forecasts that this event will reach its peak intensity by early 2027. Meanwhile, the University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab estimates that the resulting heat-related excess deaths could reach 451,000 by February.
El Niño represents the warm phase of the natural El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, a climate pattern that affects weather worldwide. It generally leads to elevated global temperatures and disrupts rainfall patterns, causing droughts in some regions and heavy precipitation in others. This phenomenon typically recurs every two to seven years when weakening trade winds allow warmer waters to accumulate in the eastern Pacific.
What distinguishes a ‘super’ El Niño is the exceptionally high sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. This month, these temperatures soared to 3.05 degrees Celsius (5.49 Fahrenheit) above average, marking the highest anomaly recorded for any El Niño since monitoring began. This far exceeds the 0.5°C threshold used to define El Niño conditions, which NOAA officially declared as having started in June.
NOAA classifies El Niño strength by temperature anomalies: 0.5°C above normal indicates a weak event, 1.0°C moderate, 1.5°C strong, and 2.0°C very strong. Although the World Meteorological Organization does not use the term ‘super,’ it predicts this developing El Niño will become a very strong event with major impacts on rainfall and temperature patterns.
The previous strong El Niño from 2023 to 2024, combined with ongoing climate change, contributed to making 2024 the hottest year on record. That period saw devastating wildfires in Bolivia and Venezuela, severe floods in Nepal, Sudan, and Spain, and deadly heatwaves in Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
While El Niño is a natural climate cycle and not caused by climate change, rising global temperatures amplify its effects. Since pre-industrial times, greenhouse gas emissions have raised the planet’s average temperature by approximately 1.4°C. This elevated baseline intensifies El Niño’s impacts, resulting in more extreme heat spikes, droughts, heavy rains, and associated disasters such as wildfires, floods, and crop failures.
Some scientists warn that the destruction expected from this year’s El Niño may foreshadow the extreme weather conditions that could become commonplace in coming decades due to human-induced global warming, even without El Niño events.
Looking ahead, the combination of climate change and El Niño leads the WMO to caution that 2027 may become the hottest year on record. The Climate Impact Lab projects that Nigeria could experience 31,400 excess heat-related deaths, Indonesia 19,300, and Sudan 17,600. However, implementing emergency measures like early warning systems and protecting outdoor workers could prevent tens of thousands of fatalities.
Regions such as southern South America and parts of Central Asia usually receive increased rainfall during El Niño, which can cause severe flooding. For instance, in 2024, floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, resulted in over 180 deaths and displaced 600,000 people. Conversely, southern Africa, Central America, and Australia often face drought conditions, negatively impacting crop yields and hydropower generation. India, the world’s largest rice exporter, anticipates its harvest to decline this year by the largest margin since the 2009-2010 El Niño-induced drought.
Nearly 50 million people are projected to face acute hunger by the end of 2027 due to the unfolding El Niño, with southern Africa and South America among the hardest hit, forecasts from the UN World Food Programme. Additionally, El Niño tends to exacerbate heatwaves even in areas distant from the Pacific, such as Europe, and is linked to increased hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.
Leave an opinion