El Niño will drive severe drought from Indonesia to the Southern Africa and northern South America, with wetter winters from the US Gulf Coast to Southern South America.
Surprised Australia is not a lot more strongly featured; New Zealand is buried under a label! I would have more confidence if any of the models were validated! On the other hand the Southern Oscillation Index may be a better predictor, especially over Australia. With EN, Darwin pressure is high: more anticyclonic and risk of drought and wildfire.
The models just don't expect much in the way of precipitation changes in AU or NZ this year; you can look at the latest (September) runs by clicking on any grid cell here: https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#impacts.
Similarly, outside of Southern AU there is not a particularly consistent signal across the past 8 large El Nino events.
That being said, models are imperfect that far out, and I'll keep updating it as new monthly releases come out.
Yes but most if not all models are quite poor in this region. They fail to get blocking right and the southern westerlies are displaced. Model results have little or no credibility: use the observations.
I get Northern VA as ~30% wetter than normal this year. Its not in the highlighted region like NC because there hasn't been a particularly consistent precipitation signal over the past strong 8 events, and the impact map uses both past events and this year's forecast.
Great post, Zeke. And a lot of work too. A note from someone who spent a career on Pacific island rainfall: for the Central Pacific islands you could go back well before 1979 by using station records instead of GPCP. Assuming it's still available (I think it is in NCDC's archive) the PACRAIN database (Pacific Rainfall Database, University of Oklahoma) compiles daily and monthly gauge records from atolls and islands across the tropical Pacific, many of them running for decades before the satellite era. That would let you include the 1957–58, 1965–66 and 1972–73 events there, as you already do for Hawaii.
There is also a scale issue. A 2.5° GPCP box over an atoll is almost all open ocean, so its anomaly and the rain actually measured on the island are different quantities. Area averages are less variable than point rainfall, so "percent of normal" from the box usually understates what an island rain gauge sees in a strong event. I wrote up the general problem, and a correction for it, here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24092206
And from the Big Island: the dry-winter signal you show matches what we expect here. Leeward and upland areas usually feel it first.
Mark Morrissey
I should note my successor on the PACRAIN started gridding the gauge data so be careful :)
Thank you for the counts of how many of the eight strong events went the expected way. That's the most useful bit for regular people, because it tells you which warnings to plan around and which are a coin flip. Next question for me is what a 4C peak does to US winter storms. Is the southern US wet signal one of the reliable ones?
Ehrlich è l’emblema dell’idiota intellettuale. Qui hai un tipo. Super istruito. Professore a Stanford. Passa un decennio a pensare alla sostenibilità. E poi tira fuori un modello. Il modello fa alcune previsioni catastrofiche.
Poi viene ricompensato per questo modello. Gli dicono che è un genio, un visionario. Sta salvando il pianeta. E l’umanità. E i cuccioli di foca. Viene pagato per il suo modello. Vince premi per il suo modello. Diventa famoso in tutto il mondo per il suo modello.
Ma la realtà, prima o poi, rende ridicolo ogni modello. Ogni modello alla fine si dimostra sbagliato. Però alcuni modelli sono comunque utili. E gli intellettuali che si aggrappano ai loro modelli inutili di fronte alla realtà sono quelli che diventano gli idioti più grandi.
I’m wondering what the chances of a 2 year el nino are? Its not something i’ve seen discussed but I understand it happens fairly regularly. Just guessing that it might be about 1/4 or 1/5?
I have a very urgent question that I hope this can answer. I saw from another site, Arctic News, that this El Niño could cause the Antarctic sea ice minimum to occur in late 2026 rather than February 2027. Is that possible or likely to occur?
I do appreciate the point of El Nino potential to have global impact on crops. However I wonder what are the facts wrt to previous strong El Ninos? Were there really significant shortages of food manifested e.g. in spikes in grain or corn prices?
Thank you for sharing the list. This enabled me to ask ChatGPT about details. The short answer is that while they are technically different many are not at all independent, as I suspected.
I hesitate pasting the AI output here bc many people hate it but I can if that's OK.
This is the best map I've seen of the teleconnections, thanks so much Zeke!
Surprised Australia is not a lot more strongly featured; New Zealand is buried under a label! I would have more confidence if any of the models were validated! On the other hand the Southern Oscillation Index may be a better predictor, especially over Australia. With EN, Darwin pressure is high: more anticyclonic and risk of drought and wildfire.
The models just don't expect much in the way of precipitation changes in AU or NZ this year; you can look at the latest (September) runs by clicking on any grid cell here: https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#impacts.
Similarly, outside of Southern AU there is not a particularly consistent signal across the past 8 large El Nino events.
That being said, models are imperfect that far out, and I'll keep updating it as new monthly releases come out.
Yes but most if not all models are quite poor in this region. They fail to get blocking right and the southern westerlies are displaced. Model results have little or no credibility: use the observations.
Why are the boundaries between high impact and no impact regions are so sharp?
Because there are pretty sharp regional patterns of more vs less rainfall during strong El Nino events, particularly in the tropics.
So (if I read the map correctly), we expect a normal year in VA but in NC it will be much more wet than usual?
You can click any location on the map you want to see the latest model predictions here: https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#impacts
I get Northern VA as ~30% wetter than normal this year. Its not in the highlighted region like NC because there hasn't been a particularly consistent precipitation signal over the past strong 8 events, and the impact map uses both past events and this year's forecast.
4Hunger.org is translating all of these effects into the hunger they cause and what humanitarian aid is or isn not being mobilized. https://www.4hunger.org/p/hunger-foretold-the-coming-2027-hunger?r=1mi3pt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web; https://www.4hunger.org/p/el-nino-has-landed-the-rain-that?r=1mi3pt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web; https://www.4hunger.org/p/el-nino-crosses-the-atlantic-to-the?r=1mi3pt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web; https://markroberts995.substack.com/p/the-half-of-the-world-that-has-only?r=1mi3pt&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web; https://www.4hunger.org/p/nineteen-african-countries-have-already?r=1mi3pt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web. Happy to collaborate!
Great post, Zeke. And a lot of work too. A note from someone who spent a career on Pacific island rainfall: for the Central Pacific islands you could go back well before 1979 by using station records instead of GPCP. Assuming it's still available (I think it is in NCDC's archive) the PACRAIN database (Pacific Rainfall Database, University of Oklahoma) compiles daily and monthly gauge records from atolls and islands across the tropical Pacific, many of them running for decades before the satellite era. That would let you include the 1957–58, 1965–66 and 1972–73 events there, as you already do for Hawaii.
There is also a scale issue. A 2.5° GPCP box over an atoll is almost all open ocean, so its anomaly and the rain actually measured on the island are different quantities. Area averages are less variable than point rainfall, so "percent of normal" from the box usually understates what an island rain gauge sees in a strong event. I wrote up the general problem, and a correction for it, here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24092206
And from the Big Island: the dry-winter signal you show matches what we expect here. Leeward and upland areas usually feel it first.
Mark Morrissey
I should note my successor on the PACRAIN started gridding the gauge data so be careful :)
your discussion of the effect on Asia left out Japan. What can be expected there?
Thank you for the counts of how many of the eight strong events went the expected way. That's the most useful bit for regular people, because it tells you which warnings to plan around and which are a coin flip. Next question for me is what a 4C peak does to US winter storms. Is the southern US wet signal one of the reliable ones?
Great video Zeke!
Ehrlich è l’emblema dell’idiota intellettuale. Qui hai un tipo. Super istruito. Professore a Stanford. Passa un decennio a pensare alla sostenibilità. E poi tira fuori un modello. Il modello fa alcune previsioni catastrofiche.
Poi viene ricompensato per questo modello. Gli dicono che è un genio, un visionario. Sta salvando il pianeta. E l’umanità. E i cuccioli di foca. Viene pagato per il suo modello. Vince premi per il suo modello. Diventa famoso in tutto il mondo per il suo modello.
Ma la realtà, prima o poi, rende ridicolo ogni modello. Ogni modello alla fine si dimostra sbagliato. Però alcuni modelli sono comunque utili. E gli intellettuali che si aggrappano ai loro modelli inutili di fronte alla realtà sono quelli che diventano gli idioti più grandi.
I’m wondering what the chances of a 2 year el nino are? Its not something i’ve seen discussed but I understand it happens fairly regularly. Just guessing that it might be about 1/4 or 1/5?
I have a very urgent question that I hope this can answer. I saw from another site, Arctic News, that this El Niño could cause the Antarctic sea ice minimum to occur in late 2026 rather than February 2027. Is that possible or likely to occur?
Does anyone have or know of frameworks or tools to measure the impacts of El Niño on food production?
Hi Zeke,
Just wanted to know more about two specific area in the Western Himalaya,
Kullu and Lahaul Valleys. They are adjoining but have different weather.
A paper in 2026 using cedar tree cores found that Spring 2022 was the driest in four centuries (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969725029572) in Lahaul. Kullu valley was also dry until 31 January, when it snowed for about 10 days.
We have had two snow spells in Lahaul already, so I suspect we could have an early and cold winter.
Anything you can add, or is it low confidence.
I do appreciate the point of El Nino potential to have global impact on crops. However I wonder what are the facts wrt to previous strong El Ninos? Were there really significant shortages of food manifested e.g. in spikes in grain or corn prices?
Could you please clarify how independent those "thirteen independent modeling systems" are?
I asked you the same question before:
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-strongest-el-nino-ever/comment/294443800
Hopefully you will indulge me this time.
Thank you.
They are different dynamical models run by (mostly) different institutes around the world:
NCEP CFSv2
ECMWF (SEAS5.1)
Météo-France (System 9)
DWD (System 22)
CMCC (SPS4)
BOM ACCESS-S2
UKMO GloSea (System 610)
JMA (System 4)
ECCC CanESM5
ECCC GEM5.2-NEMO
NCAR CESM1
NCAR CCSM4
NASA GEOS-S2S-2
Thank you for sharing the list. This enabled me to ask ChatGPT about details. The short answer is that while they are technically different many are not at all independent, as I suspected.
I hesitate pasting the AI output here bc many people hate it but I can if that's OK.
All are sprung from the IAMFD super model. When they incorporate better reality checks then maybe they'll move into the IAMNOTFD class.
As Earth burns..
"independent" of what?
of each other
The good news is we have people like you, Zeke, who care and communicate to us that the climate beast is here on the march.
The El Nino is but a burp of heat from the heat saturated/satiated marine heat
batteries.
We must reflect on "Water we gonna do?".
And reflect on reflection😔 .