It’s official: El Niño is back. By late fall 2026, forecast models give a 2-in-3 chance of a strong-to-very strong El Niño affecting the weather, climate and ocean temperatures across the planet. El Niño is the climate system’s biggest player and one side of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. It’s the heads to La Niña’s tails. During El Niño, a swath of ocean stretching 6,000 miles (about 10,000 kilometers) westward off the coast of Ecuador warms for months on end, typically by 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1 to 2 degrees Celsius). A few degrees may not seem like much, but in that part of the world, it’s more than enough to completely reorganize wind, rainfall and temperature patterns all over the planet. I’m a climate scientist who studies the oceans. With an El Niño expected to strengthen through the summer and fall, water temperatures will heat up even more. It’s time to start preparing. How does El Niño affect the planet? No two El Niño events are exactly alike, though we’ve seen enough of them that forecasters have a pretty good idea of what’s likely to happen. People tend to focus on El Niño’s impact on land,…
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El Niño is back, and ocean temperatures are already near record highs – that can spell disaster for fish and corals
Source: The Conversation Environment — CC BY-ND 4.0