The 2026 El Niño Is Here: What Forecasters Are Saying About Its Strength and Consequences

The world’s major climate agencies are in rare agreement: an El Niño event is happening now. After a rapid spring warm-up in the central and eastern Pacific, forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center and the International Research Institute (IRI) at Columbia University have raised the probability of El Niño emergence during the May–July window to 98% . The real question is no longer if it will form, but just how powerful it will become—and whether its impacts will push global temperatures into new territory.

A Rapid Onset and a Winter-Long Stay

The transition from neutral conditions has been swift. As of mid-May 2026, NOAA confirmed that neutral conditions had given way to warming sea surface temperature anomalies across the critical Niño 3.4 monitoring region . The latest CPC forecast places the odds of El Niño forming by the May–July period at 82%, while the May IRI plume jumps even higher to 98% .

Once established, forecasters expect the event to lock in for months. The probability that El Niño conditions persist right through the Northern Hemisphere winter—December 2026 through February 2027—is 96% . That kind of staying power means the climate consequences will be felt well into next year.

How Strong Could It Get? A Split Verdict with a Super-El-Niño Upside

Peak strength is where the forecast gets less certain but more dramatic. NOAA’s official outlook places the highest single-category probability on a moderate-to-strong event. There is a 55% chance of the event reaching “moderate to strong” levels by late 2026, and a 37% chance that it hits the “strong” threshold during the October–December period, which would mean Niño 3.4 sea surface temperatures averaging more than 2°C above normal .

Behind those measured government probabilities, however, a growing chorus of operational and research models point to a much more extreme scenario. Some computer simulations indicate the 2026 El Niño could rival or even surpass the 2015–2016 super El Niño, which was the strongest event in NOAA’s records dating back to 1950 . The BBC and CNN have reported increasing confidence among scientists that this could become one of the most intense episodes ever recorded . A May assessment by The Weather Company went further, noting some models project peak anomalies of at least 2.5°C above average—numbers that would place 2026 among the very strongest events observed .

Important caveats do exist. No single strength category in NOAA’s probability table exceeds a 37% chance, a reflection of the genuine spread in model outcomes . Moreover, a prominent academic forecast using a climate-network and complexity-based approach published on arXiv suggests that a neutral year remains more likely than an El Niño, and that any El Niño that develops will be weak . This remains a minority view among the major international centers, but it underscores that the high-confidence onset does not automatically translate into a high-confidence record-breaker.

A Quieter Atlantic Hurricane Season

The most immediate and consequential impact for North America is the expected suppression of Atlantic hurricane activity. NOAA’s official 2026 Atlantic hurricane season outlook, issued on May 21, puts the odds of a below-normal season at 55%, compared with a 35% chance of near-normal activity and only a 10% chance of an above-normal season .

The numbers behind those odds: forecasters expect 8 to 14 named storms, 3 to 6 hurricanes, and 1 to 3 major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher . The primary mechanism is straightforward. During El Niño events, strengthened upper-level westerly winds over the tropical Atlantic increase vertical wind shear, which tears apart the vertical structure of developing tropical cyclones before they can organize .

Colorado State University’s seasonal forecast, released in April 2026, concurs, stating that they “anticipate El Niño being the dominant factor for the upcoming hurricane season” . Even a below-normal season, however, still carries landfall risk, and experts repeatedly caution that it only takes one storm hitting a populated coastline to make it a disastrous year .

A Global Pattern of Floods and Droughts

The familiar El Niño precipitation script is already in the seasonal outlooks. During June through August 2026, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and humanitarian agencies like Welthungerhilfe highlight the following likely regional impacts :

Drier-than-normal conditions are forecast for:

• Parts of South Asia and the Maritime Continent (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines)
• Northern East Africa and the Sahel region of West Africa
• Central America, the Caribbean, and far northern and northeastern South America
• Large sections of Australia

Wetter-than-normal conditions and flood risk are elevated for:

• The eastern Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya)
• Portions of southern South America, including Peru, Ecuador, southern Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina

Humanitarian concern is particularly acute for below-average rains in Ethiopia, where seasonal forecasts already point to drought stress, and for southern Africa, where October 2026 through March 2027 could bring another round of below-normal rainfall and extreme heat to countries including Zimbabwe, southern Mozambique, southern Malawi, and southern Zambia . The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) has designated East Africa and Southern Africa as “high concern” regions for the 2026–2027 El Niño event .

Global Temperatures: A Likely Rush Toward Records

Perhaps the most consequential global signal is temperature. The WMO’s seasonal outlook for June–August shows above-average temperatures forecast over nearly all land areas, a hallmark of El Niño’s ability to release heat from the tropical Pacific into the global atmosphere .

Some of the most stark warnings come from the scientific community. A February 2026 analysis by James Hansen and colleagues at Columbia University argued that even a moderately strong El Niño may be enough to produce a record global temperature in 2026, with even greater warmth in 2027, driven by the combination of strong climate sensitivity and the underlying greenhouse gas warming trend .

On the longer horizon, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has warned that a year of unprecedented heat is “highly likely” by 2030, and that an El Niño of this magnitude could push the global temperature past the 1.5°C above pre-industrial threshold as soon as 2027 . Carbon Brief’s state-of-the-climate analysis, based on multiple global temperature datasets, has already projected that 2026 is likely to be the second-warmest year on record, with a 19% chance of surpassing 2024 as the hottest ever .

The bottom line from the world’s leading forecast centers is clear: a high-confidence El Niño is locking in, its peak strength is still uncertain but could be historic, and its impacts—from a suppressed Atlantic hurricane season to dangerous drought and flood extremes—will reverberate across the planet through at least the first half of 2027.