Scientists have warned for months that a “super” El Niño is brewing. Now, forecast models suggest it could eclipse every event on record. The latest projections show that the peak of this El Niño is set to surpass the previous record-holder by “a truly mind-blowing margin”, Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the non-profit research organization Berkeley Earth, wrote in a blog post earlier this month. Hausfather analyzed July forecasts from 667 ensemble members across 14 different seasonal forecast models and found that peak temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean could rise about 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit (3.6 degrees Celsius) above average. That’s 1.4 degrees F (0.8 degrees C) above the previous record set during the 2015-2016 super El Niño. “For context, the gap between the strongest and the fifth strongest El Niño of the past 150 years is only about [0.9 degrees F] 0.5 degrees C,” Hausfather wrote. “The models are forecasting something outside the envelope of anything we have ever observed.”
Brace for 2027 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officially declared El Niño in June. This is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a periodic fluctuation in sea surface temperatures and air pressure over the equatorial Pacific Ocean. As El Niño ramps up, the ocean pumps more and more heat into the atmosphere, with peak sea surface temperatures arriving between November and February.
