This event will give the world a taste of our future climate, according to a new analysis.
Excerpt from this story by Earther/Gizmodo:
On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated its El Niño outlook, declaring a 90% chance of a “very strong” event. In fact, leading forecast models are predicting the strongest El Niño on record, and it could offer a preview of our future climate.
A new analysis by Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, shared with The Washington Post, found a 95% chance that the combined impact of this “super” El Niño and human-driven warming will make 2027 the hottest year on record. He reportedly estimates that the global temperature could range from 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) to 3.33 degrees F (1.85 degrees C) above the preindustrial average next year.
At the upper end of this range, 2027’s global temperature could resemble levels the planet might not otherwise reach until around 2040—temporarily fast-forwarding the current warming trend by about 13 years, according to The Washington Post. At the lower end, we’d see temperatures resembling what’s expected by the mid-2030s.
Even El Niños of ordinary strength can significantly boost Earth’s average temperature. That’s because the sharp rise of sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean releases vast amounts of heat into the atmosphere. But this is no ordinary El Niño.
“No El Niño in the modern record has run this warm this early in its development: measured against each year’s own climatology, 2026 is now tracking above even the great 1997 and 2015 events at the same point in the year,” Hasufather and his Berkeley Earth colleague, chief scientist Robert Rohde, wrote in a July 2026 temperature update issued Thursday.
When El Niño peaks in December, sea surface temperatures are projected to be roughly 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) above average, blowing the previous record out of the water.
