It’s hot in London. My colleagues are wearing flip-flops and shorts to the office. My kids’ schools have closed down for the week. I’ve seen at least one person faint on the bus.
Heat waves around the world are becoming hotter, more frequent and longer lasting. Europe is warming faster than any other continent. Temperatures in France just reached a record high, as they seem to nearly every year.
As Chico Harlan, our global climate correspondent, reports, it’s poised to get even worse. Because this year, El Niño, the natural phenomenon that can disrupt weather around the world, is back.
Less than a month ago, I was reporting on the consequences of a brutal weeklong heat wave across Europe that turned classrooms into “pressure cookers” and caused children to fall asleep at their desks.
Europe is going through another scorcher this week, and it’s not even July.
It’s a sign of a changing planet. In general, scientists know that heat seasons are getting longer and more intense. And now, on top of that, there’s another thing on the horizon that could make heat waves unbearable.
El Niño, a natural shift in Pacific Ocean winds and water temperatures that can drastically transform global weather patterns, comes around every two to seven years, and it’s a chaos maker. This one is bound to strengthen in the coming months.
If it reaches the record-breaking proportions that many forecasts suggest, this year’s El Niño, coupled with the effects of climate change, could set off a bout of extreme weather that the world will be stretched to handle.
‘Fuel on the fire’ of a warming world
The world has dealt with these events for eons. But El Niños are now playing out across a hotter planet with more moisture in the air. That means a potential for heavier downpours, stronger droughts and, above all, hotter temperatures.
The weather pattern is called El Niño because it usually peaks around Christmas; South American fishermen centuries ago named it after the baby Jesus. (In Spanish, “El Niño” means “the little boy” but also “the Christ child.”)
El Niños that formed in 1997, 2015 and 2023 helped set off global annual temperature records.
Because temperatures continue to rise in the months after an El Niño reaches peak strength, many scientists expect 2027 to become the hottest year humanity has ever experienced — at least until the next El Niño comes along.
“The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is,” the U.N. secretary-general, António Guterres, said. “El Niño conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world.”
The return of El Niño was confirmed by scientists this month, and its signature wasn’t hard to spot. Heat maps of ocean temperature show a comet tail of pulsing red off the coast of South America. Water temperatures in a crucial monitoring zone have climbed to 29.4 degrees Celsius, the highest level ever for June.
Some research suggests El Niño could raise sea surface temperatures more than 3 degrees Celsius above the long-term average, which would be the biggest anomaly on record. That’s prompted a number of forecasters to call it a “Super El Niño.”
“I think it will be the largest so far,” Wenju Cai, a scientist who researches El Niño events at the Ocean University of China, in Qingdao, told me. “Which means a humongous anomaly.”
Danger zones
Scientists like to say that an El Niño has teleconnections — a word that sounds almost mystical, but simply means that its disruptions can happen far away from the Pacific.
These disruptions are predictable: India is often much drier in an El Niño year, as is Australia and Southeast Asia. Some regions of Africa can plunge into drought, while others might be deluged. Parts of the southern U.S. can receive more rainfall. The Atlantic hurricane season tends to be suppressed, but cyclones in the Pacific can get a boost. In 2015, 16 tropical cyclones formed, more than three times the average.
Previous El Niños have also had grave consequences for the natural world and often coincide with widespread bleaching of coral reefs. In 1982 and 1983, an El Niño disrupted the cold waters that Galápagos penguins depend on for nutrients and caused the population to plunge by three-quarters.
History shows that El Niños can exacerbate existing problems, and this year, there are many of them. A global energy shock, brought on by the war in Iran, is driving up prices and causing fertilizer shortages, straining the same farmers who might now be dealing with drought.
The Philippines, prone to drought during El Niños, is a prime example of the concerns. The country happens to be heavily dependent on fuel imports and has already seen major price increases this year — both for transportation and food — because of the current war in the Middle East.
The government is working to distribute drought-resistant seeds and fertilizers and advising the conservation of water.
Still, the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture warned last month that production of rice could fall 3.5 percent short of targets if a strong El Niño materializes.
And that’s just one country. Rice production is threatened across Asia.
It’s the beginning of another strain on the food system, in an already strained year. The consequences of this year’s El Niño will be playing out even after the heat waves subside.
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