WMO El Niño warning: its most urgent update yet
· The South African
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has issued its most direct El Niño warning to date.
The organisation confirms the event is now “firmly established” and will intensify into a very strong system in the coming months. Forecasts now show a near 100% likelihood that El Niño will persist through February 2027.
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WMO says this is the first time one of its El Niño updates has ever been this unequivocal. It reflects rare agreement across its entire global forecasting network.
WMO El Niño warning: why the ocean numbers keep climbing
The Niño 3.4 index measures sea surface temperature anomalies in the central-eastern Pacific.
It’s the standard tool for tracking El Niño’s strength, and it has jumped sharply.
The index averaged +1.5°C above normal between May and July.
It then rose to +2.0°C in July alone.
From there, it climbed further still, reaching between +2.2°C and +2.6°C in weekly readings through late July and mid-August.
Conditions beneath the surface look even more extreme. Subsurface ocean temperatures ran more than 8°C above average in some areas during July and early August.
The WMO describes this level of warmth as exceptional.
WMO El Niño warning: the language coming out of the UN
UN Secretary-General António Guterres didn’t hold back.
He said El Niño is “being supersized before our eyes” and that the world is now in “the danger zone of extreme weather.”
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo echoed the urgency. She noted that in the organisation’s 50-year history, it has never mobilised national weather services this heavily for a single event.
There’s also a new variable in the mix.
A positive Indian Ocean Dipole is expected to develop over the coming months. This could either strengthen or alter El Niño’s usual regional effects, depending on where you are in the world.
It’s worth being clear on one thing though. The WMO itself states plainly that El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon and isn’t caused by climate change, even as it compounds the effects of a warmer planet overall.
I find it genuinely rare when a scientific body drops its usual careful hedging like this. When the language shifts from “likely” to “near certain,” it’s worth paying proper attention. This seems quite hectic.
Are you already noticing changes in the weather where you are?
Let us know in the comments below, Mzansi…