El Niño is headed for record-shattering intensity, NOAA says

By Andrew Freedman, CNN

(CNN) — There is a nearly 70% chance that the building Super El Niño will be the strongest such event on record, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast released Thursday.

Previously, NOAA had been projecting that this event would likely rank “Among the largest El Niño events in the historical record.”

The change in the forecast largely stems from how rapidly this El Niño is intensifying, along with computer model guidance nearly unanimously showing it will peak in late fall and early winter at a level that is stronger than previously thought. NOAA’s El Niño intensity records date back to 1950.

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El Niño is a climate cycle characterized by hotter than average ocean temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. This warmer water transfers vast quantities of heat into the atmosphere via clouds and heavy precipitation. This, in turn, helps shift weather patterns across the globe, favoring drought in Indonesia and Australia, flooding in parts of South America and many other impacts elsewhere.

The intensity of an El Niño is determined by how hot the ocean temperatures get compared to average in a benchmark region of the tropical Pacific. NOAA expects this event to exceed even the massive Super El Niño that occurred in 1982 to 1983, which was the previous record-holder for its intensity.

Specifically, NOAA forecasters are anticipating that sea surface temperature anomalies in the Niño region will exceed 2.5 degrees Celsius above average, as measured over a three-month timespan to factor out shorter-term variability.

Long-term climate change means that background ocean temperatures throughout the tropical oceans have climbed in recent decades, which can mute the signature of El Niño.

Because of this, NOAA uses a new El Niño index known as the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, or RONI, which takes that broader warming trend into consideration. Even using that handicap, however, this El Niño is on track to be unprecedented.

“This is a genuinely remarkable event,” said University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain in a YouTube briefing on El Niño broadcast this week.

“We’re already at record-breaking or record-tying territory now, and we’re expected to skyrocket,” he said.

Uncharted territory

The effects of each El Niño tend to be unique, and society is in uncharted territory with this one. Never has there been an El Niño this intense, nor has a powerful El Niño taken place against a background climate that was as hot as it is now. These factors make its impacts somewhat of a wild card, experts say, with the effects of global warming acting in concert with El Niño to heighten the severity of heat waves and other disasters.

Just because the Super El Niño is expected to be record-strong does not mean that its impacts will be markedly worse or are guaranteed to occur in most of the locations that are typically affected, NOAA forecasters cautioned in their update.

However, it does increase the odds of typical El Niño impacts, particularly in the fall and winter months when its influence on the weather in the Northern Hemisphere peaks.

In the US, this can mean unusually wet conditions from California across the southern tier of the country, all the way to Florida. In addition, El Niño winters tend to be milder and drier than average in parts of the Midwest.

El Niño boosts global average temperatures, with the El Niño signal riding on top of the human-caused global warming trend, like an ascending escalator. El Niño events are the steps upwards, while human-caused climate change is the longer-term, steady upward trend of the escalator.

Because of the strength of this El Niño, it is virtually certain that 2027 will set a record for the hottest year on record, and possible that 2026 will as well.

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