Super El Niño Poised to Intensify as It Smashes 170-Year Record - Newsweek

The developing El Niño in the Pacific Ocean has officially become the strongest such event on record and is expected to continue strengthening over the next few months.

On Monday, WFLA-TV chief meteorologist Jeff Berardelli announced the record-breaking numbers for the current El Niño and included a graph showing the other strongest El Niño events on record in a post on X.

"It’s official, the 2026 El Niño has broken a record for the highest ocean anomaly in 170+ years… Incredibly reaching that threshold a full 2 months ahead of 2015’s record of +3.02C set on Nov 18th," Berardelli posted. "See that red line? That’s 2026. Every other bold line are the strongest El Niño’s on record. 2026 is in a league of its own. We have two months left for this El Niño to continue to intensify. And it will."

The new record comes three months after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that El Niño had developed in the tropical Pacific. El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. It occurs on average once every three to five years and forms when equatorial Pacific temperatures are .5 degrees Celsius above average for several months in a row.

A NOAA spokesperson told Newsweek on Monday that El Niño is expected to continue strengthening through November and December. Even after it begins to weaken, impacts are expected across the U.S., with the strongest impacts most typically affecting the U.S. between December and March, the spokesperson said.

Many independent meteorologists and other weather agencies have been referring to the current event as a super El Niño. Although NOAA refers to the climate pattern as “very strong,” both labels refer to an event in which waters are warmer than average, usually by around 2 degrees Celsius.

The current El Niño has already surged past that number. As of the most recent measurements shared by Berardelli, the current El Niño is 3.05 degrees Celsius above average and still climbing.

“Every El Niño is not the same; each one is unique with its own imprint on our weather,” NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) director Ken Graham said in June when NOAA announced the developing El Niño. "Advanced monitoring and an improved understanding of El Niño patterns allow the NWS to better predict and better prepare the public and our core partners for what is to come.”

The warmer the waters, the greater the influence on weather. El Niño can influence weather around the globe. In the U.S., it causes the most widespread impacts during the fall and winter months, when cooler, wetter conditions are experienced across the South, with warmer, drier conditions in the North. It can also influence the storm track, whether precipitation falls as snow or rain, and extreme cold spells.

The record broken by this year's strengthening El Niño was the sea surface temperature. The current El Niño has recorded a sea surface temperature of 3.05 degrees Celsius above average, breaking the prior record set during a 2015 event that produced sea surface temperatures of 3.02 degrees Celsius above average at its peak.

What's even more interesting is that the 2015 event set the record in November of that year, when El Niño had reached its peak. The current El Niño has already broken that record and sea surface temperatures are continuing to warm. NOAA anticipates that the current El Niño will continue strengthening through the end of the year.

A typical El Niño peaks between December and April, before it starts to weaken in the spring months. A normal El Niño lasts between nine and 12 months, although can last longer in some instances. Weather influenced by El Niño can continue to bring impacts across the U.S. even after the El Niño has started to weaken. U.S. impacts are most strongly felt during the colder months.

While El Niño is the warm phase of the ENSO cycle, La Niña is the cool phase. During a La Niña winter, there are cooler conditions in the North, wetter conditions in the Midwest and Great Lakes, and warmer and drier conditions in the South.

El Niño will keep strengthening. It remains to be seen how far above-average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific will climb. U.S. impacts because of El Niño will likely begin to be felt more widely in the coming months, as summer fades and cooler weather moves in.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Gray R. Thomas