Topic
El Niño is a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that shifts global weather, affecting fisheries, sea levels, rainfall and frost risk.
NOAA puts the odds at 83% that the strongest El Niño since 1950 is under way, NASA reports. Satellite maps show the Pacific warming and sea level shifting.
Reality
NOAA's December-to-February outlook tilts the odds toward a warmer northern tier and a wetter south, West Coast and Eastern Seaboard during a record El Niño. The maps are odds, so planners get a lean to start from and no totals to budget against.
Reality
Ecuadorian officials found at least 48 smuggled Galapagos marine iguanas between May and late August, researchers say. Authors of a Science letter say the trade is peaking just as a super El Niño wipes out the intertidal algae the animals eat.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
IPBES chair David Obura told AFP that a forecast record El Niño adds "a terrifying level of additional risk" for coral reefs. His Nature review, completed in 2020, put nearly half of species at elevated risk; a new count could pass 50%, he said.
Reality
Peru, the world's most important fishmeal exporter, turned a 10 June anchoveta suspension into a full closure in mid-August, the Guardian reported. The closure rests on a sea institute's El Niño advice. Feed buyers now depend on whether a second season opens.
Reality
World Weather Attribution and Climate Central estimate climate change added about 6 mph to Hurricane Polo's winds, against about 5 mph from El Niño. The comparison covers warm water only and is not yet peer reviewed.
Reality
A 2021 Nature Communications study found El Niño years cut landslide exposure in Colombia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology calls the current event near-record. A blog post on Eos cautions that this year's rainfall response may differ.
Reality
NASA scientists say a drought tied to El Niño has primed the central and eastern Amazon for a long, severe fire season. On October 12, Manaus officials reported PM2.5 above 135 micrograms per cubic meter, the second-worst rating on a regional index.
Reality
El Niño cut India's summer monsoon rainfall by 13 per cent, New Scientist reported. UK farms that have just had record heat and drought are expecting a warm, wet, stormy winter from the same event.
Reality
Researchers behind the Forest Declaration Assessment say 7 million hectares of forest were permanently destroyed in 2025, 15% less than the year before. They say that is not enough to meet the 2030 pledge to end deforestation.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
Copernicus said Nino3.4 sea surface temperatures hit an all-time high of 29.70C in September, above the 1982/83, 1997/98 and 2015/16 peaks. Its newer index, which adjusts for warming of the tropical oceans, does not yet put the event above those three, so the record and the ranking come apart.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishersReality
Hurricane Isaias killed at least four people after landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast as a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds, Scientific American reported. Two meteorologists quoted there say a quiet season narrows where storms can form without softening the one that does.
Reality
Purdue and Archaeological Legacy Institute researchers reached Nikumaroro on Monday for a five-day inspection of the Taraia Object. Seen in 2020 satellite imagery at a lagoon edge, it is read by some as Earhart's plane and by others as a collapsed tree.
Reality
Peat burns in under a third of Indonesia's wildfires but yields most of the haze, according to Greenpeace research. Fire emissions reached 140.5 megatonnes by Oct. 6, the highest since 2019, Copernicus data show.
Reality
Philippe Ciais's team estimates the land carbon sink took up 2.36 gigatonnes of carbon in 2025, 0.71 above the 2015-2022 average. The figure is preliminary and covers a single year, so it addresses the 2023-24 collapse but leaves a slow decline untested.
Reality
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology says weekly average sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific are at a record weeks before El Niño's December peak. Planners in exposed sectors still have 1997-98 and 2015-16 as their closest guide, because the record describes ocean heat and no source yet counts this year's damage.
Reality
Long Beach inspectors red-tagged eight buildings after Tropical Storm Rachel, the third storm in six weeks to hit the Peninsula boardwalk. The city's fire department dates the collapse to the first of them in early September, so Rachel added to damage already under way.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
Malaysia closed schools in several regions last week because of haze from Indonesian fires, a phys.org roundup of El Niño impacts reports. The WMO says El Niño will keep intensifying until a December peak. Several damage reports also name causes besides the weather cycle.
Reality
UCLA researchers report that global days of heavy rain in 2024 ran 20% above baseline, a record that topped 1983, 1998 and 2016. They tie 40% of the increase to global warming and say conditions favor another record in 2027.
Reality
NOAA's Boyin Huang and colleagues put the 1877/78 El Niño at 2.88C above average in the Nino3 index, among the strongest in modern history. New Scientist traces an estimated 20 million to 30 million famine deaths in India, China and Brazil between 1876 and 1879 to that event.
Reality
Science · October 11, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Science · September 10, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Science · October 10, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Science · October 9, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
Science · October 7, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Science · September 30, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Product · October 6, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
Science · September 23, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
Science · August 16, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Science · August 24, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Science · September 23, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Science · September 22, 2026 · One report1 publisher