Scientists Warn 1877 El Nino Could Drive Extreme Weather
Scientists said this week that a developing 1877 el nino is likely to amplify heatwaves, droughts and floods this year. Fredi Otto, a professor in climate science at Imperial College London and a lead researcher with World Weather Attribution, said there is a “serious risk of unprecedented weather extremes” if the projected El Niño arrives on top of a warmer climate.
El Niño is the warm phase of a semi-regular temperature oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean, and it can temporarily raise the average annual global surface temperature by as much as 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers said that same pattern now lands on a planet that is already substantially warmer, which makes moderate or strong El Niño events more damaging than similar episodes a few decades ago.
Otto and Mahmood on 1877 El Nino
Otto said the planet’s temperature will keep reaching new record highs because of “human-induced climate change.” The warning came alongside a broader assessment from World Weather Attribution, which has studied the effects of global warming on more than 100 extreme climate events since 2014. That work has made the group’s point sharper over time: in almost every case it has examined, human-induced climate change has had a much greater influence on the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather than El Niño cycles.
Jemilah Mahmood, director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University in Indonesia, pushed the risk into operational terms. She said the scientific projections for the combination of long-term warming and El Niño this year can be measured in “life and death,” especially when extreme heat hits people before systems respond. “Heat is exactly the kind of crisis that our systems are designed to ignore until it’s too late,” Mahmood said.
World Weather Attribution Findings
The group’s past assessments give the new warning extra weight. El Niño conditions in 2015-2016 and 2023-2024 helped boost Earth’s long-running fever to new records, and climatologists expect another spike in the months ahead. One World Weather Attribution assessment at the end of 2023 found that human-caused warming far eclipsed the effects of a strong El Niño on extreme rains in the Horn of Africa.
That is the friction inside this year’s forecast: El Niño can still add heat, drought and flood risk, but the background climate is already altered by fossil-fuel-driven warming. For people facing extreme temperatures or rainfall, that means the signal is not just the ocean pattern itself but the hotter baseline it is landing on.
Heat, Drought and Flood Risk
The practical takeaway is straightforward for communities in exposed areas: this year’s El Niño forecast is not being treated as a standalone weather cycle. Scientists are warning that the combination of El Niño and long-term warming can push already dangerous conditions into territory that is harder for health systems, water managers and disaster planners to absorb.
The next step in the story is the weather itself, as researchers watch whether the projected El Niño develops strongly enough to arrive on top of the warmer climate they described. If it does, the impacts they named — heatwaves, droughts and floods — are the ones they expect to intensify first.
