This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: This year's El Niño weather pattern will be the biggest in more than a century and could make 2027 the hottest year globally, Britain's national weather agency predicted Friday. An El Niño weather event happens when warming sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific trigger worldwide changes in winds, atmospheric pressure and rainfall, as well as higher global temperatures overall.
Adam Scaife, head of long-range forecasting at the weather agency, told the BBC: "We are expecting the biggest El Niño for over a century, peaking at something over 3°C—that is unheard of in modern climate records." This means Pacific water would heat up more than 3°C above the norm in the coming months. El Niño occurs when water temperatures rise at least 0.5°C above the baseline. While it is part of a natural cycle, scientists agree climate change increases its impacts.
A record El Niño would be "adding to the stresses of climate change" following a summer of heat waves across Europe, the Met Office said in a blog. Temperatures in the Pacific region are currently running about 2.6°C above a rolling 30-year average, according to the Climate Brink dashboard based on data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The dashboard also aggregates forecasts that put El Niño on course to peak at a 3.9°C anomaly this November—well above a 3°C anomaly detected in 2015. "We should be clear that this is an unprecedented event," British scientist Scaife said in a Met Office blog. If the forecast is accurate, then 2026 "will far exceed our recent experience of El Niño and its worldwide climate influences," said the physicist who specializes in climate modeling.
"I have never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts," he added, noting that even a 2°C rise is considered a "really big event." El Niño typically results in drier conditions across Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa and northern Brazil, and wetter conditions in the Horn of Africa, the southern United States, Peru and Ecuador. This year's anomalous warmth will have particularly strong effects throughout the tropics, Scaife said. Forecasters "expect really severe droughts in places like South America, and the West Pacific," he added.
El Niño is already causing well-below-normal rainfall in India, the Met Office said. The weather event is also expected to prompt "increased rainfall and storminess in the fall here in the U.K. around November," Scaife said. "These are not short-term weather forecasts.
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