El Niño is here and could tip Earth to a new record hot year

El Niño has officially taken hold, and NOAA forecasters are very confident it will strengthen through fall and winter—possibly among the strongest on record—raising the risk of record-breaking global heat and disrupting rainfall and hurricane patterns worldwid

El Niño arrived without fanfare, but the planet’s forecast soon will feel different—especially for communities trying to plan around weather that can’t be negotiated with.

NOAA says the global climate pattern officially took hold within the past month, in a statement released on June 11. Forecasters are very confident it will remain strong through the fall and into the winter. potentially among the strongest El Niños on record. The strongest events occurred during 1982–1983, 1997–1998, and 2015–2016.

The confirmation is also a kind of checkpoint for scientists who have been watching for this moment for months. Emily Becker, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami and a contributor to the official NOAA forecast, said the models started showing signs of it last November.

“Let’s start with what El Niño is,” Capotondi said—because understanding the mechanism is what helps communities understand why the next few months could come with such uneven, high-stakes weather.

El Niño is one phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. a climate pattern that links the Pacific Ocean’s surface and the overlying atmosphere. Its roots are in the Pacific around the equator. Under average conditions, that region has a “warm pool” in the west and a “cold tongue” that stretches eastward. During El Niño, the cold tongue is completely overpowered, replaced by warm waters stretching throughout the equatorial Pacific. Sometimes that shift is aided by a planetary-scale ocean wave called a Kelvin wave.

This time, Capotondi notes, “one such wave has been plowing across the Pacific.” In La Niña—the counterpart phase that occurred last year—the cold tongue expands westward.

The pattern is often defined by how much warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures persist across a set swath of the eastern Pacific. In NOAA’s defining region, temperatures spiked higher than average in mid-April and have remained high ever since.

And that ocean warmth matters because it changes where heat gets pumped into the atmosphere. As Sarah Larson, an atmospheric scientist at North Carolina State University, describes it, when an El Niño takes hold in the atmosphere, winds blowing from east to west over the region slacken.

Those wind changes travel through the climate system like dominoes. They tend to strengthen the eastern Pacific hurricane season while dampening the Atlantic hurricane season. Across North America, El Niño tends to push the jet stream south.

By winter, the southern U.S. tends to be wetter than normal, while the northern swath of the country and much of Canada tends to be warmer than usual.

Globally, El Niño can also contribute to record-breaking heat spells while shifting rainfall patterns around the planet. Even before winter arrives, the burgeoning event is already interfering with India’s monsoon, contributing to low rainfall estimates for the crucial season.

Recent El Niños have also worsened wildfire conditions in regions that include the Amazon, Canada, and Australia. In the Horn of Africa, unusually intense rainfall can bring flooding.

For communities living with those risks, the point is not just scientific. It’s practical: the patterns of El Niño, and scientists’ ability to read the strength of an event months in advance, give experts somewhere to start understanding and preparing for potential effects.

Michelle L’Heureux. a physical scientist at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center who leads the team that produces the official El Niño forecast. said. “El Niño pushes the future odds in certain directions.” She added that stronger events tend to shift the odds more than weaker ones. and that this forecast is an opportunity to assess risk and prepare based on El Niño’s typical influence.

Pacific El Niño events usually unfold slowly. NOAA expects the closely watched patch of ocean to keep warming compared with its average temperature all the way through November or December, when the phenomenon usually peaks before the planet’s systems trend back toward normal.

But El Niño is not a copy-and-paste event. Becker cautions that it unfolds a little bit differently each time, and that there’s “always plenty of variability.” The exact effects are therefore not certain.

Still, what is clearer is the broad direction: El Niño will raise global temperatures, likely to record levels. Whether those record highs show up this year, next year, or both is still uncertain.

There’s also an open question that sits uncomfortably alongside the certainty: it’s unclear how climate change is influencing the strength or timing of El Niño events. Becker also stressed that seeing a very strong El Niño this year isn’t necessarily a concerning sign about climate change.

What does remain undeniable is El Niño’s role as a climate driver. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation is a key factor shaping Earth’s climate each year. Maike Sonnewald. a physical oceanographer at the University of California. Davis. said it is “one of the most important emergent features of the climate system beyond the seasons.”.

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