El Niño has arrived, and weather experts fear the global climate phenomenon may be primed to match a deadly event that led to the deaths of more than 50 million people.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officially declared on Thursday that ocean conditions have warmed to the point where an El Niño event is active and will likely continue well into 2027.
El Niño is a natural climate pattern in which warmer-than-usual waters in the Pacific change weather patterns around the world for a minimum of several months.
In the official advisory, NOAA stated: ‘El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27.’
The declaration means the agency has found that sea surface temperatures are at least +0.9°F above average and are expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Climate scientists fear this frequent weather event will become a ‘Godzilla’ or ‘Super’ El Niño by the end of the year, meaning sea surface temperatures rise to 3.6°F above normal or even higher – which NOAA classifies as ‘strong.’
NOAA confirmed those fears on Thursday, stating that there is a 63 percent chance of El Niño becoming ‘very strong’ between November 2026 and January 2027.
Climate officials added that this El Niño will likely be one of the strongest since 1950, and there is a fear it could match an El Niño event from 1877, which triggered severe droughts and crop failures around the world, contributing to more than 50 million deaths globally.
Scientists warn that a so–called ‘super El Niño’ could push global temperatures (pictured) to record–breaking highs
Many climate historians think the 1877 event reshaped world history, and some consider it one of the first ‘truly global climate disasters.’
Just a 4.86°F increase in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean wreaked havoc across several continents.
Parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia experienced severe drought and forest fires. India saw its normal monsoon rains disappear, while Northern China suffered devastating dry spells that led to harvest failures. In Brazil, rivers dried up and agriculture collapsed.
There were also outbreaks of malaria, plague, dysentery, smallpox and cholera across already weakened populations.
Researchers have estimated that the resulting scarcity of food and disease outbreaks killed up to four percent of the Earth’s population at the time. That would be the equivalent of at least 250 million people dying if El Niño caused that to happen today.
While every El Niño is different, in the US, it typically brings warmer-than-normal temperatures across the northern half of the country and parts of Alaska. Cooler conditions are more common across the southern states, especially from Texas through the Southeast.
The climate pattern also tends to shift storm tracks, increasing the chances of wetter-than-average weather across California, the Southwest, the Gulf Coast and much of the Southeast.
Meanwhile, drier conditions are often seen in parts of the northern Rockies, the Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes and sections of the Mississippi Valley.
Pictured: Drought-stressed wheat plants near parched ground in a field in Kansas. Scientists fear El Niño will lead to more droughts, especially in the northern US
Thursday’s announcement revealed that the area of the central Pacific where scientists actively monitor sea surface temperatures for El Niño was 1.3°F above normal – breaking the El Niño threshold of 0.9°F.
However, NOAA also revealed that ocean waters in the eastern Pacific have already risen to 3.8°F above average. This pattern, where warmer water is detected in the east, is typical when a strong El Niño is developing.
AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Chad Merrill said in a statement: ‘Most El Niños begin in the fall, so this is developing much earlier and faster than expected.’
El Niño often disrupts global rain patterns, making the climate wetter in the southern US and drier in the north (Stock Image)
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In the US, El Niño has a major impact on the natural jet stream, which flows from west to east over the middle of the country.
As El Niño heats the Pacific, this pushes the jet stream farther south, so it flows over the southern and Gulf states.
This brings wetter weather to the South, drier weather to the Midwest and warmer weather to the Pacific Northwest and Northern Plains.
‘It will intensify drought in the Northwest and northern Rockies and lessen drought intensity and coverage in the Southwest,’ Merrill added.
‘It won’t do anything to eliminate the long-term drought in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic until we get to late fall and early winter.’
Deepti Singh, associate professor at Washington State University, told the Washington Post: ‘Simultaneous multiyear droughts similar to those in the 1870s could happen again.’
‘What is different now is that our atmosphere and oceans are substantially warmer than they were in the 1870s, which means the associated extremes could be more extreme.’
Climate forecasts show that 2026’s temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are already well above average – triggering El Niño
While Super El Niños have had a catastrophic impact on the globe in past years, meteorologists have noted that it may help the East Coast avoid a devastating Atlantic hurricane season.
Overall, AccuWeather is now predicting a below-average hurricane season, with fewer named storms and fewer tropical cyclones developing into major hurricanes.
However, AccuWeather’s Lead Long Range Forecaster Paul Pastelok told the Daily Mail that this does not mean Americans should let down their guard in 2026, as a major hurricane can still reach land despite the presence of El Niño.
‘It only takes one storm, and then boom! We’re not saying that El Niño is going to weaken and dampen the Atlantic Basin season completely,’ he said.
‘There’s still a lot of warm water, a lot of potential there. So, [I] just wanted to make sure [if] people were saying, “Oh, we don’t have to worry about anything this year.” That’s not true. It only takes one storm.’
Pastelok noted that the devastating Hurricane Andrew, which made landfall in Southern Florida as a Category 5 storm in 1992 and killed 65 people globally, developed during an El Niño summer.
