{"id":429332,"date":"2026-05-15T18:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/429332\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T18:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:13:10","slug":"the-biggest-el-nino-event-since-the-1870s-super-el-nino-is-now-the-most-likely-scenario-by-the-end-of-this-year-and-the-humanitarian-cost-could-be-huge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/429332\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The biggest El Ni\u00f1o event since the 1870s’: ‘Super’ El Ni\u00f1o is now the most likely scenario by the end of this year \u202a\u2014\u202c and the humanitarian cost could be huge"},"content":{"rendered":"

A “super” El Ni\u00f1o is now the most likely scenario from October 2026 to February 2027, according to a new forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o<\/a> is the warmer phase of the natural El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate cycle, a periodic shift in the waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean that supercharges global temperatures, in turn impacting weather patterns and crops worldwide.<\/p>\n

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Now, in a new ENSO forecast published May 14, NOAA<\/a> estimates that there’s a 65% chance that the upcoming El Ni\u00f1o will be classified as strong or very strong starting in October, potentially placing it among the strongest in recorded history.<\/p>\n

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A “very strong” El Ni\u00f1o \u2014 meaning a 3.6-degree-Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) rise in sea surface temperatures, and unofficially called a “super” El Ni\u00f1o \u2014 is now the most probable scenario<\/a> for the October-to-February period.<\/p>\n

There is also now an 82% chance that El Ni\u00f1o will arrive between now and July<\/a>, with the phase looking highly likely to continue until February 2027. This is a roughly 20 percentage-point increase in certainty<\/a> from NOAA’s April forecast that El Ni\u00f1o is right around the corner.<\/p>\n

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\"Bar\n<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o most likely to be “strong” or “very strong” from October to February.<\/p>\n

(Image credit: NOAA Climate Prediction Center)<\/p>\n

A “very strong” El Ni\u00f1o could wreak havoc <\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o events occur every two to seven years, when shifts in wind and current patterns in the tropical Pacific Ocean cause sea surface temperatures to rise 0.9 F (0.5 C) above historical averages, resulting in profound knock-on effects on the global climate. The world is rapidly exiting the neutral phase<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The world’s most recent El Ni\u00f1o spanned from May 2023 to March 2024 and was partially responsible for 2024 being the hottest year on record<\/a>. If the upcoming El Ni\u00f1o is strong or very strong, 2027 could surpass the previous record, according to Climate Brief’s State of the Climate assessment<\/a>, published April 21.<\/p>\n

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In fact, the impending El Ni\u00f1o may itself break records. “Confidence is clearly shifting higher on potentially the biggest El Ni\u00f1o event since the 1870s,” Paul Roundy<\/a>, a professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University at Albany, wrote on X on May 5.<\/a> <\/p>\n

If a “super” El Ni\u00f1o does occur, it could rival the strongest on record: a catastrophic 1877 event that spurred the 1876-to-1878 global famine. The famine killed over 50 million people<\/a>, or 3% of the world’s population at the time.<\/p>\n

Although the social, political and economic landscapes have changed since the 1877-to-1878 El Ni\u00f1o, the upcoming event could still seriously threaten food, water and economic security around the world, Deepti Singh<\/a>, head of the Climate Extremes and Impacts Lab at Washington State University, told The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

“What is different now is that our atmosphere and oceans are substantially warmer than they were in the 1870s, which means the associated extremes could be more extreme,” Singh said.<\/p>\n

More recent examples demonstrate the threat of strong and very strong El Ni\u00f1o phases. For example, an El Ni\u00f1o in 1997 to 1998 led to an estimated global economic loss<\/a> of $32 billion to $96 billion.<\/p>\n

NOAA ENSO forecaster Nathaniel Johnson<\/a> recently told Live Science that a very strong El Ni\u00f1o would impact fisheries and crops<\/a>, as well as heighten the risk of wildfires and hurricanes in parts of the world.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got more people that are living in poverty already and if you get a reduction in crop yields because of drought or flooding [from El Ni\u00f1o] then that drives prices even higher,” Liz Stephens<\/a>, a professor of climate risk and resilience at the University of Reading in the U.K., told the BBC<\/a>. “So we’re looking at potentially quite huge humanitarian impacts this year, especially if the crisis in the Middle East continues.”<\/p>\n

The next NOAA ENSO forecast will arrive June 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A “super” El Ni\u00f1o is now the most likely scenario from October 2026 to February 2027, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-429332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}