Updated ,first published
El Nino, nature’s chaotic climate agent, has formed in a warmed-up Pacific Ocean and is expected to grow to historic strength, meteorologists announced on Thursday.
Experts said the El Nino, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will probably turbocharge extreme weather across the planet. Meteorologists forecast it will rival – or exceed – a record El Nino that began in 1997 and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heatwaves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officially confirmed the existence of the El Nino, which is a warming of the Pacific near the equator that affects weather patterns across the globe. NOAA’s announcement said there’s a 63 per cent chance that the El Nino will get so intense that it “would rank among the largest El Nino events in the historical record going back to 1950”.
Japan’s Meteorological Association also declared this week that an El Niño is officially under way.
In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology does not declare an El Nino until there is a sustained atmospheric response to the higher sea surface temperatures. This has not yet occurred, but the bureau said on Thursday it was likely to form over winter.
The long-range forecast for Australia from July to September is for it to be hotter and drier than average for the time of year across the southern part of the continent, including South-East Queensland, NSW, Victoria and much of Western Australia, and a 60 per cent chance of it being unusually hot.
The warm, deep waters of an El Nino affect weather patterns by bringing “a lot of extra heat to the surface, fuelling a lot of extreme events for a lot of places around the world,” said Clark University climate scientist Abby Frazier.
She said, especially in the Pacific, “it can get dire very quickly.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described El Nino as an “urgent climate warning”.
“El Nino conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world,” Guterres said in a video message.
The Paris Agreement has a goal to hold the increase in global warming to below 2 degrees and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees. Since the signing of the United Nations treaty in 2016, significant progress has been made, prompting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to abandon its worst-case scenario for global warming, known as RCP8.5 last month.
However, warming will almost certainly exceed the 1.5 degree goal, and even 2 degrees is regarded as ambitious. An article published in Earth System Science Data on Thursday says human-induced warming reached 1.37 degrees above the 1850-1900 baseline in 2025, and this could reach 1.5 degrees within four years. The average human-induced warming for the decade from 2016 to 2025 was 1.26 degrees.
The effects of El Nino vary by region. In Australia it is usually associated with hotter, drier weather, bringing a higher risk of drought and bushfires, but the El Nino summer of 2023-24 was hot and wet because the climate system collided with a marine heatwave. The weather bureau emphasises that other climate drivers are also important for Australian weather.
El Nino often dampens – but doesn’t eliminate – Atlantic hurricane season activity, but increases it in the Pacific. So while the US East and Gulf coasts may get a break, Hawaii and other islands are more in danger, Frazier said.
In the US, El Ninos can cause more intense storms with heavier rainfall in the south, while in the following winter, the south can get wetter and the Pacific north-west warmer and drier.
The drought-stricken Middle East could benefit, climate scientists said, while other places are looking at more danger. India faces more intense heatwaves, while parts of western South America often get heavy rain and floods, along with an extra warm summer.
North-eastern Africa is probably going to get weather whiplash from intense drought to dangerously heavy rains, said Columbia University climate scientist and El Nino expert Muhammad Azhar Ehsan.
Several climate scientists forecast that 2027 will be the hottest year on record because of lagging effects of this El Nino, which is expected to peak in the northern autumn or winter.
The early indications have been so strong and noticeable that forecasters have all been predicting the same ultra-strong El Nino, Vecchi said, adding that El Nino forecasts are often all over the place at this time of year.
Even before it officially formed, this El Nino has gotten nicknames ranging from “super” to “Godzilla”.
Caitlin Fitzsimmons is the environment and climate reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. She was previously the social affairs reporter and the Money editor.Connect via email.From our partners
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