Why This El Niño Could Be the Strongest in Living Memory

A powerful weather event called El Niño is growing stronger — and scientists say it may be the biggest one in living memory. The U.K. Met Office, a major weather agency in Britain, reported that this El Niño could be the strongest since the 1800s. It began in early June and has kept getting more intense. Weather experts are warning people around the world to pay close attention.

El Niño is a natural climate event that happens every few years in the Pacific Ocean. Normally, warm water sits in the western part of the tropical Pacific. During an El Niño, that warm water shifts eastward, toward South America. This change in ocean heat affects weather patterns all around the world.

Adam Scaife, the head of long-range forecasting at the Met Office, said this event is truly unusual. He described it as 'an unprecedented event,' meaning nothing like it has been seen in modern records. 'I have never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts,' he said. That makes this El Niño especially important to track.

During a normal El Niño, ocean temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific rise about 1 to 2 degrees Celsius above normal. Scaife explained that 2 degrees Celsius is already a really big event. This current El Niño is predicted to push temperatures about 3 degrees Celsius above normal. That level of warming puts it in the category scientists call a 'Super El Niño.'

El Niño changes weather around the world by shifting where heat escapes into the atmosphere. That shift changes major wind patterns across the globe. This current event has already boosted Hurricane Lala, which brought heavy rain to Hawaii. It has also helped reduce rainfall from the Indian monsoon, which many people in Asia depend on for fresh water.

Scientists say this El Niño could make 2026 one of the hottest years ever recorded. However, 2027 might actually be even hotter, because the full heat effects of El Niño tend to show up with a delay of several months. Either way, experts believe both years will be among the warmest in history. The most recent very strong El Niños happened in 1982–1983, 1997–1998, and 2015–2016.

Nick Dunstone of the Met Office said 2027 will probably temporarily exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial period. That milestone is seen as a major warning sign for climate change. The years 1998 and 2016 were both record-breaking hot years after past strong El Niños, but they have since been overtaken as the planet keeps warming. Scientists say events like this remind us how quickly our climate is changing.