Weather — Noozify Original — October 1, 2026

El Niño 2026: A Record in Sight and What It Could Mean

By Adam Canissario

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The tropical Pacific is heading toward an El Niño event of a scale not seen in at least 76 years. In its September 10th monthly update, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center said there was more than a 90 percent chance that the event would be very strong through the fall and winter. It also put the odds at 75 percent that the average conditions from October through December would surpass those of every El Niño recorded since 1950.

The ocean is already showing why forecasters are paying such close attention. Sea surface temperatures across the eastern equatorial Pacific were more than 3°C, or roughly 5.4°F, above normal, and portions of the subsurface ocean were more than 10°C above average. Adam Scaife, who leads long-range forecasting at the UK's Met Office, described the signal in unusually stark terms, saying, "I have never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts."

Exactly how exceptional the event looks depends on which measurement is used. The familiar Niño-3.4 index, which tracks sea surface temperature departures in a section of the equatorial Pacific, moved beyond +3.0°C during the week centered on September 16th, according to Columbia University forecasters. NOAA's preferred measure reads lower because, since February 1st, it has adjusted for the overall warming of the tropical oceans. On that relative scale, the same stretch of ocean averaged +1.8°C in August and reached +2.2°C in NOAA's weekly update on September 28th. NOAA's official thresholds apply to a three-month average of the relative measure, on which 2.0°C marks a "very strong" El Niño and 2.5°C a historic one, and the current record is 2.4°C, set in the winter of 1982–83. Because a three-month average trails a fast-rising event, the latest one, covering June through August, was only 1.4°C. The number to watch is the October-through-December average, which NOAA gives 75 percent odds of reaching 2.5°C or more.

El Niño develops through a continuing interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere. When the easterly trade winds weaken, warm surface water that normally piles up near Indonesia migrates eastward and suppresses the usual cold upwelling off South America. Rising air follows the warmer water east, further weakening the trade winds and allowing even more warm water to shift eastward. That reinforcing mechanism, the Bjerknes feedback, is why an established El Niño becomes increasingly difficult to reverse. A warm patch of ocean by itself is not enough, because, as the ENSO Blog explains, the atmosphere is what transmits the phenomenon's effects beyond the Pacific.

The scale of the current event was far from obvious at the beginning of the year. In February, NOAA expected the Pacific to remain neutral through the summer. It formally declared El Niño on June 11th, and in its September 3rd update, the World Meteorological Organization gave El Niño a nearly 100 percent likelihood of continuing through February 2027.

The question of peak intensity is less settled than the question of persistence. Columbia's September forecast showed all 22 models maintaining very strong conditions into February, and the WMO expects the event to reach its maximum toward the end of 2026. Strong El Niños frequently weaken rapidly once they peak, and NOAA's seasonal outlook calls for a substantial decline between March and May. Each of the three strongest El Niños since 1950 was followed within roughly a year by La Niña, the colder phase of the same climate cycle.

For the United States, one of El Niño's most important pathways is the Pacific jet stream, which in a typical El Niño winter shifts southward and directs more storms across the southern tier. NOAA's September 17th outlook put the chance of a wetter-than-normal winter at 70 to 80 percent across southern Georgia and northern Florida, 40 to 50 percent across the southern Plains, and 50 to 60 percent along the California coast, while the northern tier and interior Northwest were tilted toward warmer-than-normal conditions.

Those percentages are probabilities rather than guarantees. California received at least 150 percent of its normal precipitation during the 1982–83 and 1997–98 events, but in 2015–16 its precipitation came in below the average for non-El Niño years, as storms shifted northward to the Pacific Northwest.

The clearest signal so far may be showing up in the hurricane basins. El Niño typically strengthens upper-level winds over the Atlantic, creating wind shear that can disrupt developing storms, while weaker winds aloft favor storms in the eastern and central Pacific. As of 5 p.m. EDT on September 30th, the Atlantic had recorded eight named storms but no hurricanes, with accumulated cyclone energy 89 percent below the 1991–2020 average. The eastern Pacific showed almost the reverse pattern: 17 named storms, with accumulated energy 89 percent above average. The Atlantic season, however, continues through November.

El Niño's effects also extend across the Pacific. India's monsoon season ended on September 30th about 13 percent short of its long-term average, making 2026 the country's weakest monsoon season since 2015. The Met Office has identified southern Africa and northeastern Australia as facing increased drought risk, and during the previous El Niño, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe declared national emergencies.

El Niño is already reaching food supplies. Peru's production ministry has repeatedly suspended the anchoveta fishery as warm water displaces the cold upwelling that sustains it, and the country's official monitoring commission, ENFEN, expects the coastal event to reach an "extraordinary" magnitude between September and January. Ghana's cocoa regulator expects production to decline by at least 16 percent in the 2026–27 season, citing El Niño among several factors, and an Indonesian industry association has warned that drier conditions could reduce palm oil output by 1 million to 2 million tons, with price effects that typically appear 12 to 16 months later.

The longest and most consequential lag may involve global temperatures. El Niño shifts heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, and its influence on the global mean temperature can be strongest in the year after the event develops. After the 2023–24 El Niño, 2024 became the warmest year in the instrumental record, and Nick Dunstone of the Met Office has said 2027 is "very likely to replace 2024 as the warmest year on record." The starting conditions are already unusually warm: near-global sea surface temperatures in August reached the highest level recorded for any month since 1900, according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.

Climate change makes comparisons more complicated, but it is not the underlying cause of El Niño, which the WMO classifies as a natural climate phenomenon. And however strong this event becomes, what it means for any one place remains a matter of odds. As NOAA carefully puts it, the chances of El Niño-like impacts "are larger, though not guaranteed."