Record-Breaking Super El Niño Threatens Global Stability, Scientists Warn

A super El Niño event is currently underway, driven by sea surface temperatures in the central tropical Pacific that are approximately 2.9°C above the 30-year climate baseline. This thermal anomaly exceeds the levels recorded during the powerful El Niño events of 1997 and 2015 by more than 1°C. Meteorological forecasts indicate a greater than 90% probability that this year’s phenomenon will become the strongest on record since observations began in the 1870s.

As a climate scientist specializing in land and ocean temperature data, I monitor a real-time dashboard fed by 14 leading global models. The readings over the past several months have been extraordinary, signaling a weather pattern with profound implications for regions worldwide. While El Niño impacts vary geographically, the broader consequences are well documented: droughts and crop failures in some areas, flooding in others, widespread wildfires in arid forests and peatlands, and severe coral bleaching in warming oceans.

Agencies ranging from national agriculture ministries to the World Health Organization must initiate immediate mitigation strategies. Delaying preparedness could prove catastrophic as the event intensifies.

One of the most consistent and severe effects of El Niño is drought in southern Africa. Historical data from the four strongest events between 1980 and 2016 show an approximately 80% chance of below-normal rainfall in the region during the December–February wet season. Even the comparatively moderate 2023–24 El Niño triggered dire conditions, leading to disaster declarations in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, and reducing the Zambezi River to its lowest flow level ever recorded. During the 2015–16 event, South Africa’s maize harvest plummeted by nearly 50%.

With the planting season commencing in October, governments have only weeks to implement critical interventions. Priority actions should include distributing drought-resistant and early-maturing crop varieties in vulnerable zones and expanding safety-net programs for harvest failures, similar to those deployed successfully in Ethiopia during the 2015–16 drought.

Other impacts are already becoming visible. Rainfall declines across Indonesia are escalating the risk of peatland fires. The 1997 El Niño sparked fires that released an estimated 3–9 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 13–40% of global fossil fuel emissions for that year. The haze and fires associated with the 2015 event were linked to approximately 100,000 excess deaths across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Although the Indonesian government has taken significant steps to mitigate these risks—such as establishing a peatland restoration agency and restricting the clearance of primary forests and peatlands—the danger remains high. Early prevention and comprehensive preparedness are essential to managing the threats posed by what scientists describe as the largest El Niño on record by a “mind-blowing margin.”