Daniel Swain says the current El Niño has crossed into super El Niño territory after sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean reached 5.49 degrees above average last month, a threshold tied to super El Niño winter weather in the US. NOAA says the event could still strengthen further and may exceed earlier episodes dating back to at least 1950.
The current El Niño began this summer. NOAA sets the starting line for El Niño at 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit above average across a vast area of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific for several consecutive months, while super El Niño conditions begin at 3.6 degrees or higher.
Daniel Swain on El Niño
Swain described El Niño’s role in the global earth system as one that “is to release heat from the deeper oceans that has been temporarily stored there.” That shift helps move warm water eastward toward the Americas when the Pacific trade winds slow down or reverse course.
Fred Kucharski offered a different comparison for the way the energy spreads. “It is like throwing a stone into a lake,” he said. The effect reaches beyond the Pacific Ocean, and the current cycle is already contributing to weather chaos around the world.
NOAA And 1950
NOAA says there is a 75% chance the current El Niño will exceed the strength of previous events dating back to at least 1950. The sea water pushed eastward by this cycle is far hotter than anything recorded in recent decades, and the current peak is expected around December.
For people in the southern U.S., the practical concern is unusually heavy downpours and floods. The same pattern can also bring brutal droughts and crop failures in the normally lush Amazon region, while Hawaii is enduring an unprecedented hurricane season with three storms passing within 50 miles in the space of a month.
Julia Rizzo On The Shock
Julia Rizzo, a Latin America agribusiness analyst for Morgan Stanley, said, “Most El Niño years are a nuisance, but this one has the makings of a shock.” Her warning matches the scale of the temperature spike: 5.49 degrees above average last month, well beyond the 3.6-degree super El Niño threshold.
The immediate question is how much of the expected U.S. winter weather impact will actually materialize from this super El Niño. NOAA’s 75% odds of surpassing prior events point to a cycle that is already outpacing the standard pattern, and people in the southern U.S. are the ones most likely to feel the early effects.
