A strengthening El Niño is expected to develop later this year, and climate scientists warn it could combine with accelerating background warming to push global temperatures into uncharted territory.
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center puts the probability of an El Niño emerging between June and August at above 60%, with the International Research Institute's model ensemble running higher at 70% and climbing to 94% by late summer.
There is roughly a one-in-four chance the event reaches "super" El Niño status, which would make it only the fourth such occurrence in more than 40 years, after 1983, 1998 and 2016.
El Niño events occur when unusually warm surface waters spread across the central and eastern tropical Pacific, releasing heat into the atmosphere and disrupting weather patterns worldwide, typically adding 0.1C to 0.2C to global average temperatures during their peak.
What distinguishes this potential event is the baseline from which it would start.
The planet is already significantly warmer than during previous super El Niño episodes, and some climate models now show global monthly temperatures briefly exceeding 2C above pre-industrial levels later this year, a threshold that would represent the first breach of the Paris Agreement's long-term ceiling.
Carbon Brief, drawing on datasets from five research groups, predicts 2026 is likely to be the second-warmest year on record and is virtually certain to rank among the four warmest.
If a strong El Niño develops, 2027 would become the overwhelming favourite to set a new all-time record.
James Hansen, the former NASA climatologist who first warned Congress about climate change in 1988, published a paper this month projecting that global temperatures could reach 1.7C above pre-industrial levels by 2027, describing the forthcoming event as a "super-duper El Niño."
Hansen argued the extreme warming would result primarily from high climate sensitivity and increased climate forcing, with the El Niño acting as an accelerant on fuel that was already stacked.
The implications extend well beyond temperature records.
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El Niño events typically suppress Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing wind shear over the tropical basin, but they also intensify drought across southern Africa, Indonesia and Australia while delivering heavier rainfall to parts of South America and the southern United States.
The first three months of 2026 have already been the fourth warmest on record, with each successive month surpassing historical averages by a wider margin, and Arctic sea ice cover tied with 2025 for the lowest winter peak in the satellite record.
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