Weather forecasters are staring at a rare and unsettling signal in the Pacific: the current El Niño is shaping up to be so powerful it could rewrite the record books—and, with it, intensify the risk of droughts, floods and other punishing extremes around the globe.
Forecast models are converging on what amounts to an “extreme” event, said Tim Stockdale, an El Niño expert at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), an intergovernmental organisation.
After more than three decades monitoring the phenomenon, Stockdale said this year’s El Niño stands apart from anything he has previously tracked.
“I think it’s absolutely true to say we’ve never had a forecast of an El Nino that was so strong and so consistent across (forecast) models,” he said in a media briefing.
Even with the unusually firm consensus among projections, Stockdale stressed that nature can still surprise.
“I would expect it to break records, but no guarantees,” he said.
Cows lie in a dried up field in southern France
El Niño is marked by warmer-than-normal surface temperatures across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, a shift that can set off far-reaching changes in winds, pressure systems and rainfall patterns worldwide.
It typically appears every two to seven years and persists for about nine to 12 months.
When layered on top of human-induced climate change, the last El Niño helped push global temperatures higher—contributing to 2023 becoming the second-hottest year on record and 2024 reaching an all-time high.
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The impacts of the phenomenon rarely land evenly: some regions can dry out dramatically while others are drenched.
The US weather agency declared last month that El Niño had developed and would would intensify into potentially historic strength.
Last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said El Niño would quickly develop into a strong event between July and September.
Villages and farmlands in Hengzhou, Nanning in China are submerged by floodwaters
Last month, UN food aid agencies issued an appeal for funding to put prevention measures in place as El Niño builds.
In India, agricultural officials said they would draw up contingency plans to support farmers facing the prospect of low rainfall linked to the phenomenon.
Across many parts of Asia, El Niño years are often associated with drier-than-average conditions and drought.
In South Asia, El Niño can blunt the monsoon—threatening the steady rains that India and other parts of the subcontinent rely on, and that help sustain hundreds of millions of people.
Farther south, El Niño can also tilt Australia toward warmer-than-average conditions, heightening the odds of drought, heatwaves and wildfires.
In parts of the Horn of Africa, the pattern is frequently linked to heavier rainfall.
But large stretches of southern, west, central and eastern Africa usually swing the other way, experiencing drier-than-normal conditions.
In western South America, strong events often bring above-average rain to coastal Peru and Ecuador, raising the risk of flooding and landslides.
By contrast, northern Brazil is commonly pushed toward drier-than-average conditions, a setup that can increase the risk of wildfires in the Amazon.
Europe may face ‘more deadly weeks’ as new heatwave builds – WHO
Separately, the World Health Organization warned that Europe could face “more deadly weeks” ahead, as another intense heatwave gathers over the Atlantic.
In the coming days, temperatures in Portugal and southern Spain are expected to surge to 43 degrees Celsius.
Temperatures in Europe may hit 40C or higher in the current heatwave
Experts have said last month’s heatwave was the most severe recorded in Europe, straining power generation, damaging infrastructure and pushing healthcare systems toward overload.
Scientists said the extreme heat was almost certainly driven by climate change, scientists said.
France, the Netherlands and Belgium recorded 3,700 excess deaths during the heatwave between 20 and 28 June, with authorities cautioning that the figures are preliminary and could climb.
