What is El Niño and which countries will be hit worst? The 2026 event, explained

Right now, a giant patch of the Pacific Ocean is doing something scientists have never recorded before. Sea surface temperatures in parts of the eastern equatorial Pacific have risen more than 4°C above average, and the US agency that tracks this pattern says there is a greater than 83% chance this event becomes the strongest El Niño since records began in 1950 [1]. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations’ weather agency, has called it a “behemoth” that will tear through Latin America, Eastern and Southern Africa, Asia and the Pacific with extreme heat, droughts and floods [2, 3].

Named by Peruvian fishermen centuries ago after the Christ Child, because the warm current appeared near Christmas, El Niño is a natural cycle. But the one forming now is landing on a planet already running a fever, and the damage bill is already climbing [2, 4]. Here is what El Niño actually is, what set off this particular event, which countries are predicted to suffer most, and what it has already broken.

Every two to seven years, that system hiccups. The trade winds weaken or even reverse direction, and the warm water that was piled up in the west sloshes back toward the east. Rain follows warmth, so the heavy rains shift toward the central and eastern Pacific, while Indonesia, Australia and parts of Asia and southern Africa dry out [2].

That is El Niño. It is one phase of a larger natural cycle called ENSO, short for El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Think of it as a pendulum with three positions: El Niño (warm east), La Niña (extra cold east, the opposite swing), and a neutral middle state. Events typically start between March and June, peak between November and February, and can last up to 18 months [2].

Scientists measure the strength of an event using the Niño 3.4 index. This is simply the temperature of a specific rectangular patch of the central Pacific Ocean, compared to the long-term average. A number above zero means warmer than usual. El Niño is declared when that patch runs more than 0.5°C above average, and a “very strong” event crosses 2°C. Because the whole ocean has been warming over the decades, scientists also use a newer measure, RONI, which compares the event’s warming to the surrounding ocean, to separate El Niño’s own heat from the general background warming of the planet [2].

The WMO also notes it does not use the phrase “Super El Niño,” which is media shorthand for very strong events [2]. But the substance behind the label is real: this is the strongest El Niño ever measured this early in its development.

What actually caused this El Niño

El Niño events are not random, and neither is this one. Scientists can reconstruct the chain of events that built it, and it began with the opposite phase of the cycle.

Step 1: La Niña charged the battery. Through 2025, the Pacific was in a La Niña phase, with stronger-than-normal trade winds piling an unusual amount of warm water up in the western Pacific near Indonesia, while cold water dominated the east. Think of La Niña as charging a battery in the west of the ocean. When the charging stops, all that stored warm water sits there like a loaded spring, ready to surge back east the moment the winds allow it [8].

Step 2: The winds flipped. In January 2026, a powerful westerly wind burst tore across the western and central tropical Pacific. A westerly wind burst is simply a stretch of days when the trade winds blow the wrong way, from west to east instead of east to west. It is like the hair dryer in the bathtub suddenly blowing toward the other end. Forecasters tracking the collapse of La Niña described it as one of the strongest such bursts seen in recent years. By April, Columbia University’s climate institute reported that the Pacific had flipped from La Niña to a neutral state, and was already moving toward El Niño by May, a remarkably fast turnaround [8, 10].

Step 3: An unusual cyclone “triplet” gave it a shove. In April 2026, a rare alignment of three tropical cyclones formed across the equatorial Pacific at once (two in the Southern Hemisphere and Super Typhoon Sinlaku in the Northern Hemisphere). Cyclones on opposite sides of the equator act like two fans blowing in the same direction along the equator, creating exactly the kind of westerly wind bursts that push warm water east. This triplet pattern shoved a massive pulse of warm water eastward, speeding up the transition [8].

Step 4: Invisible underwater waves did the heavy lifting. The wind bursts launched equatorial Kelvin waves. Picture a slow-moving underwater conveyor belt: a fat bulge of warm water that travels eastward beneath the ocean surface, hugging the equator, tracked by NOAA’s network of floating buoys. As a Kelvin wave crosses the Pacific, it presses down the thermocline, the sharp boundary between the warm surface layer and the cold deep water below, like pressing down the lid of a pot. With that lid pressed down, the cold water can no longer rise to the surface off South America, and the sea surface warms quickly. Multiple Kelvin waves stacked on top of each other through mid-2026, one of the most powerful such signals ever recorded at this stage of a cycle [9].

Step 5: The system fed itself. Once the eastern Pacific warmed, a self-reinforcing loop called the Bjerknes feedback took over. This is the same idea as the squeal when a microphone gets too close to a speaker: the output becomes the input. Warm surface water weakens the trade winds, weaker winds mean less cold upwelling, which lets the east warm even more, which weakens the winds further. This is why El Niño events, once started, tend to keep strengthening until they peak, and it is why NOAA expects this event to keep intensifying toward a November-December peak [1, 9].

The climate change amplifier. One cause this event did not have: fossil fuel emissions did not “switch on” El Niño, which is a natural cycle that has existed for thousands of years. But the starting line matters enormously. The tropical Pacific has been storing heat for decades, and when the EU’s Copernicus climate service recorded the highest global sea surface temperature in history in August 2026 (21.11°C), it attributed the record to heat added by El Niño plus decades of human-driven warming. The WMO likewise flagged “exceptionally warm global oceans” and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole as amplifiers. The Dipole is a seesaw of warm and cold water in the Indian Ocean that, in its positive phase, dries out Australia and parts of Africa and Asia, piling on top of El Niño’s own drying effect. A warmer planet does not create El Niño, but it gives every El Niño a head start [2, 5].

Why it became so strong so fast. The combination is what forecasters find remarkable: a La Niña that stored exceptional heat in the west, a January wind burst ranking among the strongest on record, an April cyclone triplet adding more eastward push, Kelvin wave energy among the highest ever measured at this stage, and a background ocean running at record warmth. By October, the temperature of the water beneath the surface in the eastern Pacific was more than 10°C above normal at depth, and westerly winds stretched across the whole equatorial Pacific, confirming a fully developed, self-feeding event [1, 9].

The countries predicted to be hit worst

El Niño does not create weather disasters out of nothing. It loads the dice. A region that normally has a small chance of drought now has a much bigger chance, and it does so in patterns that repeat across past strong events. Here is the global map of risk, drawing on UN, WMO and regional forecast centers [2, 4, 6, 7].

Southern Africa: the drought epicenter. The Red Cross climate center puts a 70% chance on rainfall shortfalls bigger than any El Niño year since 1950 across southern Angola, southern Malawi, south-central Mozambique, southern Zambia and Zimbabwe. This is the region’s maize belt, where most families grow their own food, and the December-to-February rains feed the staple crop. In the last comparable event (2023-24), southern Africa had its driest season of the eight recent strong El Niños, prompting a $5.5 billion humanitarian appeal for more than 61 million people [6, 7].

The Greater Horn of Africa: flooding instead. The same event dries southern Africa while drenching the Horn of East Africa. Forecasters give a 90% likelihood of heavier-than-normal October-December rains over southern Ethiopia, central-to-southern Somalia and north-eastern Kenya, with some areas expecting more than 400 mm. Floods bring deaths, water-borne disease and destroyed schools and crops; the 1997 event killed nearly 3,000 people in floods across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, the deadliest El Niño-linked floods on record [4, 7].

South and Southeast Asia: heat, weak monsoon, fire. India’s monsoon, the seasonal rains that fill rivers and water crops, ran about 12% below normal by mid-August, with September rainfall nearly 50% below average, threatening rice, maize and cotton and pushing rice export predictions to their lowest since 2009-10. Sri Lanka has drinking water shortages affecting over 160,000 people. Rainfall shortages delayed rice planting in the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. Australia is bracing for drought and severe wildfires, and Indonesia’s fire season is already extreme [5, 6, 7].

Latin America: split down the middle. Central America and the Caribbean face deepening drought. Guatemala’s July rainfall ran 85% below average; by late August about 75% of Puerto Rico was in at least moderate drought and 44% in extreme drought, with water rationing across Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Meanwhile the southern United States, Gulf Coast, and the Pacific coasts of Peru and Ecuador tilt toward intense rain and flooding [5, 6].

Pacific islands and other drought flags. UNICEF flags Colombia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines for drought and water scarcity, and in conflict-affected Afghanistan, Chad, Sudan and Yemen, El Niño is forecast to magnify hunger directly, because these countries have almost no safety margin left after years of war [4].

The hunger numbers. UNICEF projects more than 347 million children across nearly 100 countries will face unusually wet or dry conditions between October and December 2026. The World Food Programme estimates nearly 50 million more people could face acute hunger by 2027, with southern Africa and Central America worst hit. The African Development Bank expects the economies of heavily affected African countries to shrink 1% to 2%, roughly $10 to $20 billion across the continent [4, 6, 7].

The damage already done

Although the event has yet to peak, its fingerprint is documented across every continent it has touched [4, 5]:

Papua New Guinea, where impacts arrived earliest: 1.2 million people estimated to need direct food relief, with water shortages, crop losses, rising prices, disrupted schools and bushfire risk. The government has declared the event and approved a $112 million extra budget to respond.

Peru’s fisheries collapse: the anchovy catch fell 99.9% in June 2026 and 99.1% in July compared with the year before, because warm surface water blocked the cold upwelling that carries fish food. With little to catch, the sector, which had already shrunk by nearly 75%, moved from a temporary suspension to a full closure and a national fisheries emergency. Peru’s central bank projects about 78,000 jobs lost in 2026 and 44,000 more in 2027, shaving national economic growth.

Indonesia’s wildfire crisis: roughly 230,000 acres burned in July alone, more than the previous six months combined. August recorded over 3,500 fire hotspots, the most since 2015. Emergency room visits for breathing problems hit 5,000 per week, up from 500. Smoke pushed Kuala Lumpur to briefly become the world’s most polluted city in late August, forced school closures across Indonesia and Malaysia, and drove Brunei’s air quality to “very unhealthy” levels.

Africa’s divided misery: summer droughts in Ethiopia and western Kenya produced poor maize and grain harvests. In Sudan, delayed rains lowered the Nile to levels that deepened an existing famine. These follow a 2023-24 event from which the region had barely recovered.

North America and Europe: heat partly attributed to the developing El Niño contributed to France’s worst wildfire season since 1949. In the United States, two hurricanes struck Hawaii within weeks (almost unheard of), a flash flood in the Grand Canyon killed at least three hikers, El Niño-driven waves raised sea levels along the California coast by up to 1.2 feet, beachfront homes in Redondo Beach were condemned, and California declared a state of emergency. The Atlantic hurricane season produced its latest first hurricane on record, a hurricane-suppressing effect El Niño is known for, while the eastern Pacific was hyperactive.

Trade and food prices: drought cut Panama Canal transits and helped push a single ship to pay a record $4 million to jump the queue, while the 2023 El Niño had already cost an estimated $103.3 billion in global damage and, in 2024, helped push global temperature past 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first calendar year [5, 6].

Globally, August 22 saw the highest average sea surface temperature ever measured across most of the world’s oceans, at 21.11°C, and NASA documented a sharp decline in Pacific phytoplankton, the microscopic plants that form the base of the ocean food chain, as nutrient-rich upwelling failed [5].

Myths vs facts

Claim	Verified answer
“El Niño is caused by climate change.”	Myth. El Niño is a natural cycle that has existed for thousands of years; this event was triggered by wind changes and ocean movements. But a warmer planet raises the starting line, so the same El Niño now brings more extreme heat, heavier downpours and deeper droughts than an identical event would have decades ago [2, 5].
“‘Super El Niño’ is an official scientific category.”	Myth. The WMO does not use the term; it classifies events as weak, moderate, strong or very strong. “Super El Niño” is media shorthand for events crossing the very strong threshold [2].
“El Niño guarantees specific weather in specific countries.”	Myth. El Niño loads the dice, it does not roll them. Not every region is affected, and outcomes vary with the event’s strength, timing and interplay with other patterns like the Indian Ocean Dipole. Forecasts are probabilities, not promises [2, 7].
“It only affects countries near the Pacific.”	Myth. El Niño shifts global air circulation, moving rainfall thousands of kilometers from the Pacific and syncing crop failures on several continents at once, which is why it moves world food prices [2, 7].
“This is already the strongest El Niño on record.”	Not yet confirmed. As of late October 2026, it is the strongest ever measured for this time of year, and agencies forecast a historic peak, but the official verdict depends on multi-month averages that are still being recorded [1, 3, 5].
“The January 2026 wind burst and cyclone triplet are proven causes.”	Attributed, not settled. These details come from weather-monitoring organizations following the event as it developed; the bigger picture (La Niña recharge, wind reversal, Kelvin waves, Bjerknes feedback) is documented across WMO and NOAA sources [1, 2, 8].

Bottom line

El Niño is the ocean’s great pendulum. Normally, trade winds push warm water west and cold water rises in the east. When the winds falter, the warm water floods back, carrying the world’s rain with it. This particular swing was charged by a La Niña that piled heat in the west, triggered by a record wind burst and a rare three-cyclone alignment, carried east by stacked underwater waves, and supercharged by an ocean already at record heat. The result is shaping up to be the biggest swing ever measured. Southern Africa and Central America face the deepest drought and hunger risk, the Greater Horn of Africa faces potentially deadly floods, and South and Southeast Asia face withered monsoons and fire. The bill has already started arriving in Peru’s empty fishing nets, Indonesia’s smoke-choked cities, Sudan’s shrinking Nile and California’s flooded coast, and the forecast peak is still ahead [1, 4, 7].

Disclaimer: This article is for general education only and is based on reports current as of late October 2026. Forecasts and impact figures will evolve as the event develops. If you notice an error or would like to send feedback or corrections, please contact us.

References

• [1] ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, Climate Prediction Center, NOAA
• [2] El Niño / La Niña phenomena, World Meteorological Organization
• [3] ‘Behemoth’ El Niño to upend global weather, UN warns, USA Today
• [4] From drought to deluge: ‘Super’ El Niño’s expanding reach, UN News
• [5] 2026-2027 El Niño event, Wikipedia
• [6] 2023-2024 El Niño event, Wikipedia
• [7] World must look to the past to prepare for likely unprecedented El Niño, Mongabay
• [8] La Niña collapse begins: how a major Pacific flip will reshape 2026 weather patterns, Severe-Weather Europe
• [9] 2026 is building up to a super El Niño: how the ocean is driving it, Climate Adaptation Center
• [10] ENSO Forecast, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University