Although it’s still early in terms of forecasting, there’s been a lot of talk about the potential development of a “super” El Niño in the months to come, which will likely push the annual global temperature higher and exacerbate extreme weather.
On top of that, several climate models are anticipating a particularly strong El Niño that is expected to begin in June or July and peak in November, with ocean temperatures in one key region of the Pacific potentially reaching 2 C above the average. Some models are forecasting even higher anomalies.
El Niño is part of a larger atmospheric and oceanic system called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which can affect weather patterns around the world. When waters in that particular region of the Pacific Ocean — called Niño 3.4 — are warmer than average, we get an El Niño. Colder temperatures bring La Niña.
There’s also a neutral phase.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its monthly ENSO update on Thursday, saying that we are in an El Niño watch, with an 82 per cent chance of it developing between May and July and a 96 per cent chance of it continuing from December to February. They also noted there is still uncertainty about its peak strength.
Under normal conditions, trade winds blow west along the equator in the Pacific Ocean, where it moves warm water from South America towards Asia. Water rises from the depths of the ocean to replace that warm water.
During an El Niño, that process reverses as the trade winds weaken. And those conditions seem to be forming now.
While there could be a strong or even ‘super’ El Niño developing this year, scientists say not to expect impacts in Canada this summer. But that doesn’t mean we get off scott-free.
And what happens in the Pacific Ocean doesn’t stay in the Pacific Ocean. A strong El Niño will have global impacts.
The good news for Canada is that the effects won’t be felt this summer.
Winter is another story
The forecast is for the El Niño to develop around June or July and peak around November or December.
And that’s typically when Canadians can expect to feel the impact of an El Niño.
“The biggest effects in Canada occur during the winter. And they are profound. I mean, they’re really profound,” said Kent Moore, a professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Toronto. “Eastern Canada [and] Central Canada … typically has warm winters.”
But it’s not just Eastern Canada. The West tends to be warm as well.
Canada experienced its warmest winter on record in 2023-2024 during the last El Niño, which was a strong one, with a temperature anomaly of 1.5 C in the El Niño 3.4 region of the Pacific Ocean. And the forecast for this one is expected to be closer to 2 C or higher.
The last super El Niño was in 2015-2016, when the temperature anomaly was 2.4 C.
We could feel some impacts in 2027, but it’s not really a direct effect from El Niño.
‘Climate change is the reason to freak out’
As we continue to burn fossil fuels into the atmosphere, the planet continues to warm. The past 11 years have been the warmest on record. That includes 2020, 2021 and 2022 — all years where there was a La Niña, which typically produces a cooling effect.
So putting an El Niño on top of the warming that’s already happening means we will likely see a record-breaking year in 2027, if not even 2026.
“There’s just so much more heat in the tropical Pacific that it just warms the whole Earth up,” Moore said.
On Monday, there was a virtual media briefing by a group of climate scientists on what to expect in 2026.
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Friederike Otto, a professor in climate science at the centre for environmental policy at Imperial College London, stressed that we can expect “unprecedented weather extremes that would not have been observed in similar historical El Niño events that are quote-unquote cooler climates,” and that records will be broken because of the continued use of fossil fuels, not El Niño.
“While El Niño could lead to very extreme conditions later this year, it’s not the reason to freak out. El Niño is a natural phenomenon. It comes and goes. Climate change, [by] contrast, gets worse and worse and worse as long as we do not stop burning fossil fuels, and it’s already a much stronger influence on many extremes than most natural modes of variability,” Otto said.
“Climate change is the reason to freak out, and ideally, in a constructive way, by doing something about it. And we do know what to do about it. We have the knowledge and technology to go very, very far away from using fossil fuels.”
Otto and other climate scientists noted that in the U.S., many states just experienced their warmest winter ever. The March heat wave was the most geographically widespread in U.S. history.
The World Weather Attribution, a collection of scientists who do rapid analyses on extreme weather events, concluded the heat wave was “virtually impossible without climate change.”
As well, the world recorded its highest burned area from wildfires for the period of January to April, with more than 150 million hectares of land burned.
Globally, weather extremes such as heavy rainfall, droughts and heat will be exacerbated by the El Niño.
However, an El Niño tends to lead to a quieter hurricane season, which is good news for Atlantic Canada.
However, in the West, which is already experiencing years of drought conditions, the wildfire risk could increase in 2027.
“El Niño has been associated with an increase in fire risk in Canada, particularly in Western Canada, and also in the northwest U.S. and Alaska. And we’ve already seen … the worst three fire seasons in recent records in Canada,” Theodore Keeping, a climate and wildfire scientist at the University of Reading in southern England, said during the media briefing.
“And there have been a number of attribution studies linking the effect of climate change on extreme fire weather to those conditions…. So I think this is definitely something to be watching out for.”
