The Child is now the Superchild. This phenomenon of natural warming of waters in the Pacific continues to strengthen and accumulates records for sea temperatures. El Superniño has turned the Pacific basin into a boiling cauldron where patterns have changed. Not only does it fuel cyclones that drag storms towards America, but in Asia droughts and weak monsoons (India and Indonesia) have reduced harvests and food security. And, meanwhile, Indonesia succumbs to fires. The extra heat that the planet will receive at the end of 2026 will probably make it the warmest year since there are records; and if not, it will be among the three hottest. Its effects will last until 2027.
✚ What is the Child?
It is part of a natural climate cycle of warming of the Pacific, but this year's cycle is expected to cause extreme drought, heat waves, floods and other disturbances. This phenomenon occurs when the waters of the central and eastern Pacific become warmer and the atmosphere more humid, which alters precipitation patterns with an impact on much of the planet. These episodes occur, on average, every two to seven years.
✚ What effects is it currently causing?
Part of his blows are already being appreciated. On Tuesday in the Pacific there were four tropical storms, of which two were already considered important cyclones: Polo, which is causing significant rains in Baja California, and Nolo, located near Hawaii. The Mexican authorities have declared an alert due to the forecast of very intense rains in several states and possible landslides, river floods and overflows and floods. Areas of Texas, Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa (USA) remained under a flood watch on Thursday.
✚ What temperatures have already been measured in the waters?
Sea surface temperatures in the eastern central Pacific, not far from the American coast, reach anomalies of 3.1ºC compared to the average of the last 30 years. “And, if we go to the waters off the coast of Peru and Ecuador, the anomaly is 3.9 ºC,” says José Luis Camacho, spokesperson for the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), which is “an outrage.” These are figures that surpass any previous record. If this trend persists, we could witness an extraordinary El Niño episode, he adds.
✚ What is expected to happen in Europe?
"It is going to be one of the strongest El Niño's ever recorded. But specifying its impact on Europe is always complicated. We know the behavior of the El Niño in the Pacific, Southeast Asia, Australia and South America, where its pattern is quite clear. But in Europe it depends a lot... And being such an extreme El Niño we do not have many historical events to serve as a reference," Carlo Buontempo, head of the Copernicus climate change service, told this newspaper.
✚ What do climate models indicate about its impact on Europe?
Buontempo explains that the models offer for Europe “a sign of heat in the months until the end of the year”; and for the Mediterranean a sign of rain before Christmas (during this October and perhaps November). In addition, for the second half of autumn (November or December) heavier than normal rains are expected in the drought-stricken area between Great Britain and Ukraine.
✚ Will El Niño affect Spain?
“There is no direct relationship,” says Camacho. Can we blame El Niño for the rains that are going to come in the coming weeks? “He would be a very distant culprit, if he is at all guilty,” the Aemet spokesperson responds expressively. For this meteorologist, what is relevant is that the blockade responsible for the heat waves in Spain is being broken and that the summer has been “endless.” Now everything indicates that the October pattern is going to be “quite different.” “That heat dome has broken and the Atlantic circulations are entering,” he adds.
Could all this be related to El Niño? "We can't say it. We have to pay attention and monitor the hurricanes that come from the Atlantic," says Camacho, for whom this is the priority task.
✚ What is the relationship between El Niño and climate change caused by human activities?
They are different phenomena that overlap. El Niño represents additional warming to that caused by human-caused climate change. Therefore, two factors come together – climate change caused by humans and the natural variability of El Niño. But their combination increases the probability of extreme phenomena.
✚ Has this relationship not been established? Is El Niño more frequent or intense now?
"Whether there is El Niño or not, climate change has nothing to do with it. There is no proven statistical relationship between an increase in the number of Boys or Girls [inverse, cooling phenomenon] now," says Camacho. However, the temperature of the oceans is “doped” by the effect of climate change, which accumulates more heat; and for that reason, “we are going towards values above normal, since the system is heating up.” El Niño is not more frequent now, "but it can be more intense if we measure it by the temperature of sea level, since the oceans are warming," he specifies.
✚ Floods and droughts, what other effects do they cause?
There have been droughts and forest fires in Borneo or Sumatra and insufficient harvests in India. El Niño phenomena, on the other hand, reduce hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. Tropical meteorological activity in that ocean has been practically non-existent this year. El Niño could cause around 451,000 deaths in these nine months (from June to February) due to high temperatures around the world, according to the Climate Impact Lab report.
✚ Will it be the Niño with the greatest impacts ever recorded?
The absolute values of sea surface temperature in the central Pacific “have been breaking monthly records since June, and forecasts indicate that this trend will continue,” says Carlo Buontempo. “We predict that this episode will record the highest absolute temperatures and anomalies observed to date, due to the combination of an extreme El Niño event with the current level of global warming.” In relative terms, its magnitude is comparable to that of the largest events on record – at the same level as those of 1982, 1997 and 2015 – but it occurs on a warmer climate base than ever. “Therefore, absolute temperatures are breaking records by very wide margins.”
✚ What are the solutions?
The main response should be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but “the El Niño phenomenon is something natural,” recalls Camacho. "Emissions must be reduced, with climate change or without climate change. Of course, emissions must be reduced but they have no direct effect on El Niño," he insists.
✚ How does this warming of the waters of the Pacific Ocean occur?
