U.N. says El Niño will hit record strength and peak in December
El Niño is strengthening fast and should peak around December at record strength, the World Meteorological Organization said Thursday. A key Pacific temperature gauge is forecast to run 3.7 degrees Celsius above normal this fall, beating the 2015-16 record. NOAA's monthly El Niño update is also due Thursday.
The El Niño warming the Pacific Ocean is on track to break records, the United Nations weather agency said Thursday.
"El Niño is firmly established and strengthening rapidly," said Celeste Saulo, head of the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO. She said there is a near-100% chance it will last through February 2027. It could be "one of the strongest since at least 1950," she said.
The WMO watches a stretch of the central and eastern tropical Pacific called the Niño 3.4 region. Ocean temperatures there rose from 1.6 degrees Celsius above normal in June to 2.5 degrees above normal in August. For October through December, the average is forecast to hit about 3.7 degrees Celsius, or 6.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above normal. That would be the highest since records began. The old record was 2.6 degrees Celsius above normal, set from November 2015 to January 2016.
The forecast is a consensus of 13 national and international forecast centers, the WMO said.
El Niño does not add new heat to Earth, Saulo explained. It releases heat the ocean has already stored. "The ocean it's drawing from is the warmest we've ever measured it," she said. That is why strong El Niño years, like 2024, are often among the hottest on record.
The WMO expects warmer-than-normal weather across much of the globe. It forecasts wetter conditions in the Greater Horn of Africa, parts of Central and East Asia, parts of North America and southeastern South America. Drier weather is expected over India and its neighbors, southern Central America, parts of the Caribbean and northwestern South America, Anadolu Agency reported.
Those shifts are already being felt. Sri Lanka is in a deep drought, and Indonesia's wildfires have sent haze across Southeast Asia, with both tied in part to El Niño.
In the United States, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is scheduled to post its next monthly El Niño discussion on Thursday, Oct. 8. Its last update, in September, gave a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event this fall and winter. It put the odds of a historic event, stronger than any since 1950, at 75% for October through December.
What we know: The WMO expects a record-strength El Niño peaking around December.
What we don't: Exactly how strong it will get, and what NOAA's new odds will show.
Where outlets agree The WMO and Anadolu Agency both report a near-100% chance El Niño lasts through February 2027, with Niño 3.4 forecast near 3.7 degrees Celsius above normal.
Where they differ The WMO calls it potentially one of the strongest since 1950, but the final peak depends on how the ocean behaves over the next two months.