Extreme Meteorology (EL NIÑO) with Marshall Shepherd

The 2026–2027 El Niño is not just another warm phase in a natural climate cycle. It is already, months before its typical winter peak, matching or surpassing the strongest El Niño events on record—1982–83 and 2015–16—and ocean temperatures are running two to three degrees Celsius above normal in the central Pacific, with subsurface water as much as eight degrees warmer. Dr. Marshall Shepherd, a distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Georgia and former NASA satellite mission scientist, puts it plainly: this could be the strongest El Niño that any living human has ever seen. And it is unfolding on top of a planet that is already warmer because of greenhouse gas emissions. As Shepherd says, El Niño is “an additional steroid on top of that warming.”

What El Niño Actually Is—and Why It Matters Everywhere

El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally recurring climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean. Every two to seven years, the trade winds weaken or reverse, allowing warm water from the western Pacific to slosh eastward. That shuts off the cold, nutrient-rich upwelling along the South American coast—Peruvian fishermen noticed it around Christmas centuries ago, which is how it got its name. The opposite phase, La Niña, was not formally recognized until the 1990s.