This summer was already predicted to be hot for much of the planet, after a near-record year of global heat last year.But El Niño – the influential weather pattern associated with heat, unlike the cooler La Niña – has arrived and it's raising more alarm."If we have a big El Niño on top of the long-term warming trend, that just really enhances the probability that we'll see a new record global mean temperature," says meteorologist Nat Johnson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who is part of the El Niño forecasting team.Officials from Europe to India and Australia are warning of potential harmful effects, including heat waves and abnormally dry conditions."Even though it's a phenomenon that's rooted in the tropical Pacific," Johnson says, global jet streams transfer El Niño's influence far and wide."Basically, every continent, you'll see some sort of impact from an El Niño or a La Niña event," he says.
Some of that impact, he says, is economic, from disrupted marine ecosystems and fisheries."The strongest impacts initially will tend to be in the tropical regions," Johnson says, adding that El Niño tends to bring enhanced drought to a wide band of locations, from Indonesia to the northern Amazon.And this year's El Niño is shaping up to be a strong one."There is a 63% chance of a very strong El Niño [from November to January] that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950," NOAA said in an advisory."This could be a very significant event in 2026 and lingering into 2027," says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.A strong El Niño would drive up average global temperatures.The hottest years on record generally occur in years when El Niño is active, because it occurs when the Eastern Pacific is hotter than usual.How a strong El Niño will affect the U.S.
is more difficult to predict."What we experience in our own backyard is us...