Why the most extreme El Niño event for a century is on its way

August 27, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The coming El Niño: what the forecasts are showing

In November 2025, Professor Adam Scaife and his colleagues at the UK Met Office noticed something unusual in their decadal climate forecasts. A year ahead of any expected event, many of their models were already showing the tropical Pacific beginning to warm. By spring and summer 2026, the signals had become unmistakable: some of the most reliable seasonal forecasting models were projecting an El Niño event of three or four degrees — far beyond anything in the modern observational record. The only comparable event Scaife can point to is the 1877 El Niño, which caused massive droughts and worldwide disruption.

What El Niño actually is

El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon that has been occurring for thousands of years, independent of human-caused climate change. It is not simply a weather system moving across the Atlantic; it is a coupled phenomenon requiring interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere. During an El Niño event, the central and eastern tropical Pacific — just west of South America — warms rapidly. This warm water becomes the centre for rainfall, which migrates from the western Pacific to where the water is warmest. The rising air over the warm water creates a circulation pattern: air flows in from the west, cancelling out the normal trade winds that blow from the east. This whole coupled system — t

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What you'll learn

1 (02:04) **Introduction & Guest** - Host Jason Bridger introduces the episode and guest Professor Adam Shafe, head of long-range predictions at the Met Office. The topic: the 2026 El Niño, predicted to be the most extreme in decades.
2 (03:20) **What is El Niño? A Natural, Coupled Phenomenon** - Shafe defines El Niño as a natural climate phenomenon independent of climate change, arising from ocean-atmosphere coupling in the tropical Pacific.
3 (06:30) **Frequency and Predictability of El Niño Events** - El Niño recurs every few years, but not with clockwork regularity; big events happen roughly every 10-15 years.
4 (07:51) **Is Climate Change Making El Niño More Frequent or Stronger?** - The effect of climate change on El Niño frequency and strength is an active research question with no clear answer yet.
5 (10:01) **How El Niño is Measured: The Niño 3.4 Index** - Shafe explains the standard metric: the average sea surface temperature in a box (5°S to 5°N, 120°W to 170°W) in the central Pacific.
6 (11:49) **Global Impacts of a Large El Niño: The 2015 Case** - Historical composites show clear global teleconnections: more rain in the central Pacific, droughts in the Amazon, Central America, and the West Pacific, and a suppressed Indian monsoon.
7 (15:16) **El Niño and Global Temperature Records** - El Niño adds a temporary top-up to long-term climate change, often setting new global temperature records.

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Show Notes

Every several years, the surface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean rise, triggering a climate event that has a domino effect on weather patterns across the globe. This is known as El Niño – and this year, meteorologists predict we’re in for a big one. But how exactly do these events occur, how big an effect is climate change having on their frequency and impact, and what can we expect to see in the future?

In this episode, we’re joined by Prof Adam Scaife, head of long-range prediction at the Met Office in the UK.

He tells us how El Niño events arise in the Pacific Ocean and spread across the globe, how they’ve been occurring cyclically for thousands of years, and why the event this year is forecasted to be the most extreme in decades.

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