Super El Nino set to make 2026 record hottest year

The warming phase of a natural climate cycle, El Nino temporarily raises sea temperatures in the tropical Pacific, triggering changes in weather that can increase the risk of drought and flooding, and exacerbate man-made global warming.

The Copernicus Clim­ate Change Service said sea surface temperatures in a tell-tale El Nino monitoring region of the Pacific, known as Nino3.4, had reached an “all-time high” of 29.70 degrees Celsius last month. This exceeded the peak temperatures of previously strong El Nino events of 1982/1983, 1997/1998 and 2015/2016, the EU monitor said.

This year’s El Nino, which emerged in June, is “very exceptional” but it is too early to say whether it is the strongest ever observed, Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo. As climate change raises ocean temperatures, it can make recent El Nino events appear stronger than past ones, complicating historical comparisons.

Copernicus said it had adopted a new index, which accounts for the warming of tropical oceans, that suggested the current event is not yet stronger than past ones. “It’s a very large event even in that metric,” Buontempo said.

“This very large event today is happening in a much warmer climate.” Not all forecasters use the same scale to interpret El Nino. On Friday, Japan’s weather agency said that El Nino conditions had reached their “strongest intensity on record”.

Record ocean temperatures. As El Nino gathers strength, global average sea surface temperatures hit a record 21.05 degrees Celsius for September, topping the previous high of 20.92 for the same month in 2023,.

Experts have warned that this El Nino, combined with human-induced climate change, could make 2027 the hottest year on record as heat stored in the Pacific is released into the atmosphere. The weather phenomenon, which typically occurs every two to seven years and lasts around nine to 12 months, can drive world temperatures higher the year after its peak.

But Buontempo said even 2026 could wind up a record breaker as this El Nino builds toward its peak. “If we follow the pattern we have seen in the past, we may have a record-breaking 2026, followed by a record-breaking 2027,” he.

After a record-breaking August, the world experienced its second hottest September ever observed, with surface air temperatures averaging 16.27 degrees Celsius, the EU service said.