By far the strongest El Niño ever measured – set to increase the median sea surface temperature by 3.6°C – is forming on top of an already warming planet, paving the way for record temperatures in 2027 and severe impacts on human societies and ecosystems. This week, scientists at CMCC, one of the few global centres that study El Niño with prediction models that fully couple ocean and atmosphere components, explain what 96% of prediction models are describing as an extraordinary event, and what it has to do with climate change and human activities.
As of the beginning of August the main seasonal forecast models are all indicating that the coming El Niño event will be a very strong one with median monthly sea surface temperature anomaly values peaking at +3.6°C, roughly 0.8°C higher than the previous record of around 2.75°C set during the 2015–16 El Niño. For perspective, the gap between the strongest and the fifth-strongest El Niño over the past 150 years is only about 0.5°C, meaning that current predictions point to a Pacific warming that falls well above anything seen before.
“We now know that this will be the most intense El Niño event on record both in terms of predictions for the coming months – with 96% of models showing that this event will be the strongest in the modern observational record – but also notably in terms of absolute values of surface temperature,” says CMCC researcher Enrico Scoccimarro.
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