Climate models suggest a ‘strong’ El Niño could occur later this year, with the potential of increasing global temperatures.
Global temperatures could be pushed to unprecedented extremes as climate pundits warn a ‘Super El Niño’ is looking likely.
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Earlier this month, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed there is a 62 per cent chance of El Niño forming this summer.
While model forecasts are relatively less accurate at this time of the year, the “increasing odds” of El Niño occurring later this year are supported by large amounts of heat in the subsurface ocean and the expected weakening of low-level trade winds.
“If El Niño forms, the potential strength remains very uncertain, with a one-in-three chance that it would be ‘strong’ during October to December 2026,” the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says.
What are La Niña and El Niño?
La Niña (Spanish for ‘the girl’) is the more common phenomenon that occurs when trade winds in the Pacific tend to blow from east to west, pushing warm surface waters towards the western Pacific.
This causes cold water to ‘upwell’ or rise from the depths of the ocean, making sea surface temperatures cooler on average, particularly in the Americas.
El Niño can be triggered by a series of tropical wind bursts from the west that weaken or even reverse these trade winds. When this occurs, warm surface water sloshes back towards South America, where the warming of surface water prevents the colder deepwater from upwelling.
El Niño, which occurs irregularly and typically lasts for about a year, tends to increase global temperatures, which in turn can result in more extreme weather such as flooding.
This is because for every 1℃ rise in air temperature, the atmosphere can hold around seven per cent more moisture, leading to more intense and heavy rainfall. El Niño can also intensify heatwaves in the tropics, which is why El Niño years are often among the warmest on record.
The last El Niño occurred from May 2023 through March 2024, contributing towards record-breaking heat which fuelled a series of deadly heatwaves, wildfires and floods across the globe.
Some meteorologists predict that a typical El Niño event tends to cause a temporary 0.1-0.2℃ increase in the global mean temperature.
This is not as significant as temperature rises fuelled by human-made climate change, which has pushed the global surface temperature up by approximately 1.3- 1.5℃ compared to pre-industrial levels.
What is a ‘Super El Niño’ – and will it form this year?
Multiple newspapers and climate pundits have claimed this year’s potential El Niño will be a ‘super’ version, but this isn’t actually an official scientific category.
People may use the term ‘super’ informally to indicate El Niño’s strength, which is usually defined using the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI), but it isn’t used by NOAA.
For El Niño conditions to form, monthly sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean need to warm +0.5°C above normal, with the expectation that the warming will persist for five consecutive overlapping three-month periods.
A weak El Niño occurs when the ONI is greater than or equal to 0.5°C but less than or equal to 0.9°C. Sea surface temperature greater than or equal to 1°C and less than or equal to 1.4°C is defined as a ‘moderate’ El Niño, while a ‘strong’ El Niño occurs when the peak ONI is greater than or equal to 1.5°C.
A ‘super’ El Niño is therefore implying that a strong El Niño will occur – but not everybody agrees that this will happen.
Is climate change charging El Niño?
The heat from El Niño comes from energy that accumulated in the West Pacific during La Niña, which continued in February 2026.
Scientists at Columbia University say this means it would be "a bit surprising” to have a ‘Super El Niño’ so soon after the moderately strong one in 2023-2024.
“It takes time to recharge the ‘battery’ of heat in the East Pacific, but perhaps human-made warming is decreasing the time needed to recharge the battery,” researchers explain.
“Climate science pundits who previously overlooked the possibility of an El Nino this year now seem to be jumping on a Super El Niño bandwagon.”
The paper, published on 20 March, adds that while El Niño strength and frequency are important, especially the issue of whether these are being modified by global warming, a more important topic is the “ongoing, extraordinary, acceleration of ocean surface warming”.
