What is a super El Niño and how does it affect global weather and records?

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1. 1

   Super El Niño events (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 13, 2026Checked Oct 13, 2026

   “Super El Niño events, officially called very strong El Niño events, are climatic phenomena resulting from the average sea surface temperatures in parts of the Pacific Ocean rising by 2° Celsius or more. Climate impacts from Super El Niño events can include widespread and severe flooding, drought and unseasonable temperature extremes, which can result in crop failures, food shortages, famine, disruption in water supplies, displacement, declines in native fauna, and an increased risk of wildfires and cyclones, which can contribute to economic disruption and civil conflict. As of September 2026 there have been six super El Niño events in recorded history. El Niño events prior to modern recordkeeping are sometimes identified by paleoclimatologists, historians and archeologists and are referred to as Mega-Niños.”

2. 2

   El Niño–Southern Oscillation (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 13, 2026Checked Oct 13, 2026

   “El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a global climate phenomenon that emerges from variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific Ocean. Those variations have an irregular pattern, but do have some appearance of cycles. The occurrence of ENSO is not easily predictable. It affects the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics, and has links (teleconnections) to higher-latitude regions of the world. The warming phase of the sea surface temperature is known as "El Niño" and the cooling phase as "La Niña". The Southern Oscillation is the accompanying atmospheric oscillation, which is coupled with the sea temperature change. El Niño is associated with higher than normal sea level air pressure over Indonesia and Australia, and across the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. La Niña has roughly the reverse pattern: high pressure over the central and eastern Pacific and lower pressure through much of the rest of the tropics and subtropics. The two phenomena typically last approximately one year each and typically occur every two to seven years with varying intensity, with neutral periods of lower intensity interspersed.”

3. 3

   2024 global temperature record is consistent with model-predicted warming.

   Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Mann et al.)Published May 11, 2026Checked Oct 13, 2026

   “We employ a semiempirical approach combining climate model simulations and observational temperatures to assess the likelihood of recent global temperature records. Monte Carlo simulations are used to generate global temperature series consistent with combined estimates of forced (anthropogenic + natural) and internal variability derived from observations and CMIP6 multimodel simulations. We find that the El Niño-boosted 2024 global temperature record had a ~12% likelihood of occurrence (a one-in-eight-year event), similar to the prior (also El Niño-boosted) record year 2016 (~14% likelihood). Of the records set during the past three decades, only 1998 is found to have been truly anomalous, with a ~2.5% likelihood of occurrence. Each of these records is found to have been nearly impossible in the absence of human-caused warming.”

4. 4

   Major fires in Indonesian Borneo are possible under all ENSO phases.

   npj natural hazards (Lam et al.)Published Apr 23, 2026Checked Oct 13, 2026

   “Despite the proven link between the positive phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and rainfall deficit, a primary driver of fires, the rare occurrence of historical major fires makes it difficult to robustly assess their climatic cause using purely the observational record. We analysed a large initialised ensemble of global climate simulations to demonstrate that although the risk of severe fires that level or surpass those observed in 1997 and 2015 is strongly boosted by an El Niño by a factor of 2.7, such risk exists regardless of the ENSO phase. Other factors modulating the risk include the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and a Rossby wave train over the southern extratropics which acts to decouple the rainfall response from the ENSO state. Our study highlights that even in places characterised by high seasonal predictability, there is still a possibility of high impact weather events to occur against the expected response to a given teleconnection mode, which implies the necessity to build long-term resilience against the associated hazards on top of improving our sub-seasonal forecasting capability.”

5. 5

   Super El Niño sets another record as it strengthens to 'unprecedented levels'

   BBC NewsPublished Oct 13, 2026Checked Oct 13, 2026

   “El Niño has continued to strengthen, with several key measures now in record territory. Simon King explores how it compares to previous events.”

6. 6

   Targeted marine cloud brightening weakens subsequent El Niño.

   Science advances (Wan et al.)Published Jul 8, 2026Checked Oct 13, 2026

   “Marine cloud brightening (MCB), a solar geoengineering proposal to reduce long-term warming, could theoretically mitigate extremes by instead targeting seasonal-to-multiyear phenomena, such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Yet the effectiveness of regional MCB to deliberately modify ENSO has not been tested. By exploiting the 2019-2020 Australian wildfire opportunistic experiment, we demonstrate that the "natural" cloud brightening and ensuing La Niña-like response can be reproduced by simulating MCB in the southeast Pacific. We then explore how MCB modifies the 1997-1998 and 2015-2016 El Niño events. MCB initiated during the El Niño growth phase disrupts the Bjerknes feedbacks that normally amplify El Niño conditions, but those effects weaken after MCB is terminated. Only the earliest and longest interventions restore neutral ENSO conditions and weaken teleconnections. Weakening El Niño can result in unintended consequences including an earlier La Niña following the targeted El Niño, although early and short interventions may counter these effects. Our results support the consideration of climate variability and teleconnections as targets in solar geoengineering research.”