I appreciate this evaluation using the surface data. However, much more can be learned from the information in the ocean below the surface. There anomalously high ocean temperatures remain in the equatorial zone in the eastern Pacific.
This is the Southern Hemisphere winter when the southeast trade winds are strongest and they extend across the equator. As it stands, the warmest waters are 165 to 170 W along the equator and it is not until about October that these can extend farther eastwards along the equator typically. So atmosphere and ocean coupling is present near the dateline and that is affecting teleconnections and weather patterns, but the full so-called Bjerknes coupling between the atmosphere and ocean can mainly occur after September when the southern hemisphere SSTs begin to rise. This is why the peaks in EN occur typically centered about December. But the biggest influences on teleconnections and warmest conditions occur some 3 months later typically in February. It then depends on whether the ocean runs out of heat, and the model results suggest they wont. But the models all do the annual cycle incorrectly.
I didn't understand what can be (or already has been) learned from the information in the ocean below the surface in addition to what we learned from this article.
The last part of your comment reads like you don't really trust model predictions because they don't capture annual cycle correctly. (All models are wrong, as we all know.) The question is, why a quarter into XXI century, we still don't have models that do? Is it that hard?
The models do not do well in simulating precipitation and the ITCZ and SPCZ. Those are the organized convergence zones. Higher resolution helps, but I suspect it relates to the frequency, intensity and duration of convection and convection is not resolved. Models are tuned to get the amount about right but they do not get intensity or frequency right, and the SPCZ in particular occurs in the wrong place.
Not very closely, but I follow the research in this are for a very long time. The issues that you are citing plagued climate models from the very beginning of climate modeling and it doesn't like there was much of a progress despite exponentially growing speed of computers. Higher resolution helps, as you said, but not enough. Is there a fundamental limitation that we don't see at the moment?
Further, El Nino strength is governed by regional circulation patterns which interact with global circulation patterns e.g. between the ocean surface and atmosphere.
Take for example the tropical Atlantic - currently we have a Atlantic Nina and cooler than normal tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures support El Ninos.
But a warmer tropical Atlantic during winter can terminate El Ninos if I'm not mistaken.
The temperatures of the tropical Atlantic can be governed by e.g. a massive marine heatwave in the North Atlantic which weakens the trade winds over the tropical Atlantic supporting a warming. This then can interact with a drying of the Amazon contributing to weakening trade winds over the tropical Atlantic.
Further, sea ice patterns can impact El Nino evolution. So e.g. take a El Nino in the making disturbing the circulation around the Antarctic - large wave in the jet, which then leads to a sea ice loss in a sector. and depending of where the loss occurs it can feed back differently on the El Nino.
And the heating patterns of the El Nino control the reaction of the walker circulation which are governed e.g. by surface winds letting one sector running hot while others are a bit cooler like we have it just now in the central Pacific.
Hence, to simulate the evolution of El Ninos is impossible doesn't matter the model resolution as you would have to simulate weather over the curse of many months with lots of local to regional amplifications over short times occurring somewhere over the planet all able to influence the tropical Pacific circulation.
That we get an extreme El Nino able to reach record territory is simply a energy budget that exist but how it will be realized let's see and watch...
Further, the higher the latent heat loss of the equatorial Pacific the lower the surface temperature expression could become. Hence it's a bit questionable to pin point El Nino strength on SSTAs as latent heat loss - evaporation - rules the game...
The simplest idealized example of a positive feedback is that involving snow and ice. Surfaces covered in snow or ice are bright white and highly reflective of solar radiation. This is to say, they have a high albedo. As the temperatures increase, and snow and ice melt, leaving behind much darker ocean or land, more radiation is absorbed instead of reflected, and the temperature rises even more. Yet another feedback with snow is from dust and aerosols, which may be deposited on snow and make it darker, and hence more likely to melt as greater sunshine is absorbed.
However there are several things not quite right in the above comment. They are indeed "mistaken".
The Atlantic is small v the Pacific and its influences are similarly smaller.
Just the last week or so we had an event where the upper level forcing of the EL Nino had been injected into a large planetary wave in the South Pacific over extended time period and a blocking event happened way downstream injecting large amounts of warm and moist air into an sector where the winter time sea ice shrinked somewhat. Maybe here also a connection possible - looks interesting...
Further, what I observed is how atmospheric rivers moving in the South Pacific towards Antarctica and their convective centers modulated the planetary wave to make a wave - could have been diabatic heating via expanding upper level warm conveyor belts altering upper level temperature gradients and jet position. Moist processes come now into focus in jet stream modulation and it had been striking how the jet reacted to the forming convection centers.
Here a review on this emerging matter in atmospheric science:
Would guess that just by mid-latitude storm intensification El Nino's can contribute/trigger sea ice losses in specific sectors all depending on overall configurations?
Maybe even in a warmer climate with a warmer surface ocean at higher latitudes from the EL Nino originating poleward teleconnections could be enhanced as affected storm systems during winter have more energy to tap into?
Just wondering a bit around here.
But mid-latitude kinetic eddy energy increases during El Ninos as should poleward energy transport so.
And always happy if corrected if find the whole thematic highly fascinating...
I mean, 1998 would be an exceptionally cool year if it occurred today. A very strong El Nino can temporally add around 0.2C to annual temperatures. Human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are effectively adding a permanent super-El Nino worth of heat to the climate system every decade.
It's uncharted territory now. Paleo climatology does not have the records of the absurd eco destruction that humanity has produced the last couple of hundred years give or take. I like the way you qualify your posts with phrases akin to "We can't be absolutely sure". That's honesty showing the tomorrows will be our Monday morning quarterbacks even though you do the best scientific analysis I am very climate anxious and firmly believe we gotta step up surface reflection and water desalination. Remember when years ago they said bad things will happen if we don't cut down on fossils? ( Am 68 and guilty of ignoring the plea). Well, I hope a plea would be to reflect and hydrate the lands now too.. above and beyond our lame drawdown.
I don't envy you in prediction calls. And, you wisely qualify possibilities.
Could you please clarify how independent those "thirteen independent modeling systems" are? You mentioned they are dynamical which I interpret as some sort of reduced set of Navier-Stokes Equations + thermodynamics. I can believe that the codes were written partially or fully independently but the physics encapsulated by these models cannot be really independent.
I'm sorry-- I was trying to be quick and to point you to a resource that explains many of the model differences. Let me try again.
Seasonal forecast models and CMIP models are mostly different operational configurations of the exact same underlying Earth System Model codebase.
they operational, high-resolution, initialized versions of the broader modeling platforms being prepared for CMIP7. Understanding the differences in these models is exactly what the CMIP experiments work to understand. For example, GloSea in the UK runs the same code as HadGEM3.
The physics equations are the same! but teh numerical integration method may be different; the initial conditions and boundary conditions are certainly very approximate and may be different; the numerical time step and grid spacing are often different; the way you interpolate the upper atm boundary conditions, the landscape parameterizations, cloud approximations, crop albedo, aerosol parameterizations---- all of these can be handled differently by forecast models. There are hundreds of approximations. One modeling hope is that pattern matching to historical weather patterns maybe be faster and less computationally expensive, and some people are using AI models to explore this idea.
This video talks about a few, and you may find it informative for your question.
I know there is a lot of inbreeding among the CMIP family. Essentially we have many versions of the same model, as you described it.
El Nino is a different beast though. Most advanced models are not used for El Nino forecasting for a reason: they are not good enough. (Which is an issue in itself but this is off-topic.)
I don't believe that AI will be helpful here but that's just an opinion.
Those 13 systems could also be close relatives but I don't know much about it so I asked.
The video is about about storms predictions, so not very relevant here unless El Nino forecasters are using similar methods.
And EVERYBODY remember Dr James Hansen predicted this as a SUPER-DUPER El Nino a couple of months back hands down. I like James and Zeke. They complement the truth.
I more or less made the same argument back in March. Even that early models suggested a potential record event this year (but our confidence has substantially increased now that we are outside the spring predictability barrier): https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-el-nino-cometh
You did indeed and sounded the alarms back in March. Same for '23. This is why we read you 😁. Glad there are people like you to help guide us as Earth 🔥.
In Indonesia I am already feel the impact of hyper El Nino - currently I experienced no rainfall since June 25 in Jakarta, Java and I expect the drought here in Java will intensify further towards year-end...
Hello everybody, I came across the 2024 study, "Deep ocean warming-induced El Niño changes" and wonder if the currently unfolding 2026 "super" El Nino is due to a tipping point, triggered by deep ocean warming, "specific patterns" in the tropical mean state have been found.
Quote: In particular, the deep ocean warming could increase convective extreme El Niño events by 40 to 80% relative to the current climate. Our findings suggest that anthropogenic greenhouse warming will have a prolonged impact on El Niño variability through delayed deep ocean warming, even if CO2 stabilization is achieved.
The efficiency of energy transfer from the deep ocean to the surface is closely related to ocean stratification, so deep ocean warming modulates irreversible SST changes in a unique pattern, e.g., El Niño-like warming.
Figure 1a, b show the changes in the tropical mean state from the PD (present day) period. Even when the CO2 concentration returns to current levels, the tropical mean state shows considerable differences. SST anomalies (SSTA) show positive signals across the tropics, indicating incomplete recovery and a warmer state compared to the present climate. In particular, El Niño-like warming (i.e., stronger warming in the eastern Pacific) is evident in the spatial pattern of the SST difference, which is similar to the slow response to global warming.
This result is consistent with all IW_EXPs, suggesting a release of heat from the deep ocean to the surface. In the eastern Pacific, a region of weak ocean stratification and intense upwelling, heat is much more efficiently transferred to the surface. The surface warming is further amplified by the Bjerknes feedback so that the surface warming is greater than the subsurface warming though the warming originated from the deep ocean warming. Therefore, the difference in the vertical temperature gradient is positive in the upper layer, suggesting enhanced ocean stratification
..results suggest that deep ocean warming triggers specific patterns in the tropical mean state, such as El Niño-like warming and southward shift of the ITCZ. As reported in the previous study, the deep ocean acts as a stove, continuously supplying heat to the ocean surface, and the efficiency of this process depends on ocean stratification. As a result, the energy from the deep ocean is more effectively transferred to the surface in the eastern Pacific, where stratification is weaker and climatological upwelling prevails. The initial warming over the eastern Pacific will be intensified by the Bjerknes feedback and the southward shift of the Pacific ITCZ. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50663-9
Quote: Even the human-made increase of SST matters because the magnitude of the SST anomaly relative to the surrounding climate presumably drives the Bjerknes feedback that causes the El Nino to grow and maintain its strong SST anomaly. https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/yes-2026-is-on-track-to-be-the-hottest
Quote: Bjerknes feedback – The close relationship between ocean temperatures and the strength of the trade winds was first identified by Jacob Bjerknes in 1969. Bjerknes also hypothesized that ENSO was a positive feedback system where the associated changes in one component of the climate system (the ocean or atmosphere) tend to reinforce changes in the other. This process is known as Bjerknes feedback. For example, during the growth of El Niño, the reduced contrast in ocean temperatures across the Pacific results in weaker trade winds, further reinforcing the El Niño state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño–Southern_Oscillation#Bjerknes_feedback
The way I understand this by natural philosophy if you will. Ocean stratification can't be avoided, the ocean is thermally conducive and it's not possible to add enough pressure to lock up excess energy as ice. Obviously impossible as sea level rise or reduction would be very different. When you compress something you generate heat, and as this expands it has a cooling effect. As soon as you have salt difference or weight different for other reason. You quicky end up in a situation where the thermal layers that réðust mixing get reinforced. What I'm truly baffled about is NASA reports on 8mm sea level rise, which is so far below the expected 4rmm for 2025( warm water being compressed outside of El Nino during La Núna), it's dunvfoubding. And they must have vetted this and discussed plausible explanations they leave out as the speculations that it is.
Foreshadowing. Won’t the actuaries jump into action to protect Capital. How can they risk the wealth of their wealthy patrons in this risk filled environment. The flight to safety will be wild, and might just stop oil. TWT
Merci pour la mise en situation , mais a part la colère et l'angoisse ressentis que puis-je faire. La réponse égoïste est probablement d'attendre la suite et de remercier le Ciel de ne pas avoir d'enfants à ma charge.
Informez tous ceux que vous connaissez au sujet du changement climatique.
Ensuite, faites un don de sang, ramassez des déchets, faites du bénévolat dans une banque alimentaire ou accomplissez une autre bonne action pour le monde.
https://www.climate.us/ has reconstituted the former climate.gov site. It has good explainers about El Niño and temperature/ppt maps of previous events (for the US).
El Niño most strongly impacts the southern United States, bringing wetter and cooler winters with increased flooding and severe weather, while the northern U.S. and Canada tend to be drier and warmer than usual. Globally, it causes droughts in Southeast Asia and Australia, heavy rains and flooding in parts of South America, and can suppress Atlantic hurricane activity.
Significant areas impacted by El Niño outside of the U.S. include parts of Central America, northern Brazil, India, and Australia, where it can cause droughts and extreme weather conditions. Additionally, regions like Indonesia and the Philippines often experience changes in rainfall patterns due to El Niño.
Hi, many of us have only just started hearing about el Nino 3.4. I understand that both El Nino and La nina are warm and cool phases of the el Nino Southern Oscillation that's due to atmospheric circulation changes.
el Nino 3.4 is a particular, static geographically, area in the Pacific? Where SSTs are taken as an indicator of Nino/Nina strength? It's usually? always? the warmest part of the ocean or this area is used as the standard?
What, if any, implications does this El Niño have for the whole “acceleration” debate? I know some claim that El Niño operates as a “stair-step” pushing global temps ever upward. Is that accurate? Besides for the short-term implications of this record El Niño, I am confused as to what the long-term implications might be.
By itself, not that much. Rigorous analyses of acceleration should try and remove the effects of short-term internal variability like El Niño and La Niño (though this can be challenging in practice). There is a robust debate about the effects of climate change on El Niño, but my sense is there is no clear consensus that climate change has intensified events (at least beyond the long-term background warming).
Thanks! So the idea that El Niño acts as a “stair step” for global temps is not persuasive? I see this idea in doomer circles online all the time. Usually the claim is accompanied by something like the attached chart which does make El Niño events look like temporary jumps that push warming upwards. I understand that this is probably not the correct way of looking at the situation.
But what if we never get under 1.5C again after this El Niño? I suppose that’s a whole other question….
I mean, it does in the sense that El Ninos tend to follow La Ninas that suppress temperatures, so you end up with a stair-step pattern superimposed on a long term trend. But El Nino and La Nina are not forcings – they don't provide any sustained heating or cooling for the climate system after the events end.
El Niño events regulate temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean so that rising temperature trends are lacking in the tropical Pacific. During the cold phase with relatively clear skies, solar radiation heats up the upper tropical Pacific Ocean, but the south-easterly trade winds redistribute the heat through wind-driven currents, with most of it carried west to become stored in the deep Warm Pool or subtropical ocean.
During El Niño, the stored heat is first transported eastwards, warming the central and eastern Pacific and changing the Walker Circulation. Energy is then transported out of the tropics within the ocean toward higher latitudes in response to the changing currents, and through the atmosphere. The ocean cools mainly from increased evaporation which is realized as latent heat in rainfall in the atmosphere. Added rainfall contributes to a general warming of the global atmosphere that peaks a few months after a strong El Niño event and leads to an increase in GMST.
Thank you very much, Dr. Trenberth, for that lucid explanation of something I've long wondered about!
Now I have another: are the trade winds being altered as the excess greenhouse warming circulates around the globe? Shifting latitudes as the Hadley cells expand poleward, perhaps?
Changes are afoot. With a warming climate and higher sea temperatures, convection tends to be stronger and taller (ITCZ and SPCZ and monsoon rains). The result is an expansion of the subtropics and a shift of the jet stream and mid latitude storm tracks polewards. The trade winds lie between the subtropics high pressures and the convergence zones, with the southeast trades typically expanding across the equator (the ITCZ lies between 5 and 10N normally). The wider expanse of subsiding air into the subtropics increases sunshine and heating and is a positive feedback. Hansen and others have blamed this on changes in aerosols, but it is much more from changes in clouds and circulation.
"The wider expanse of subsiding air into the subtropics increases sunshine and heating and is a positive feedback." Would then be there "the wider" expanse of upwelling air near equator, which _IF_ proportional (comparable area affected)- would more than offset the warming effect on the subsiding end?
Yeah this is pretty much my concern. “values will never quite go back to previous levels.” So we might touch 2C with this crazy El Niño and then never go back down?
Dr.Hausfather seems to disagree with this framing though.
But figures like James Hansen will view whatever happens after this record breaking El Niño as evidence that global warming is accelerating way beyond even what the previous WMO report indicated (.27/decade). Is that accurate? If so, yikes.
AFAICT, Dr. Hausfather doesn't disagree with describing the GMST trend as a 'stair-step' shape punctuated by ENSOs, he merely says the latter is not a physical forcing of the GMST trend, but unforced (as far as is known yet) variation around it. See his reply to Theodore Rethers.
Its a bit unclear if climate change is making strong El Nino events more likely (normalizing for long-term warming). It is strongly debated on the literature with no clear consensus.
No, see the later Brink article: "...more water vapor and heating strengthens convection making it taller and narrower, and broadens the subsidence regions in the subtropics and extratropics,"
So the wider subsiding area is because oif more intense convection.
Here in South Florida, most people are jumping up and down with joy due to the suppression of potential hurricanes by the ENSO event, AND the current La Niña in the Atlantic which is further inhibiting tropical storm development.
Unfortunately, most don't understand that while hurricanes... which are very focused on their paths...may be inhibited this year, the REAL danger is what will happen in the coming WINTER!
I am a sitting member of the Natural Resources Board in Sebastian, FL, and we are getting hyper focused on what this potentially record-breaking Hyper El Niño will bring to Florida, and specifically to the Treasure Coast this winter. Rain totals are likely to well-exceed typical summer totals over 3-4 months with massive storms, nocturnal tornados, extensive beach erosion, and extreme potential damage to the ecosystem of the Indian River Lagoon.
With Nitrogen and Phosphorous fertilizer runoff from lawns with flood waters into the lagoon, there is the likelihood of severe algae blooms that will not dissipate due to constant overcast, and that will affect the very important sea grass that our Manatees depend on, while also killing massive number of fish, and potentially wipe out our oyster beds. We have spent YEARS improving the conditions and protection of the Lagoon, but this winter can potentially undo al the work we have done..and even potentially kill hundreds of manatees.
We are currently putting pressure on the City and County officials to enact an emergency Fertilizer BLACKOUT from Nov 1st through Feb 28th. We already do this in the summer months from June 1st to September 30th, but this year, it is critical to keep nitrogen and phosporous fertilizers off of residential, park, and even golf course properties this winter because dormant winter grass and winter hard pan, will make rain run off ground as if they were pavement... and then into swales, to flooding and eventually into the Indian River Lagoon, causing massive additional damage to what will already likely occur with the desalinization of the waters of the lagoon.
This is a MUCH bigger event coming our way than a "Potential" Tropical Storm or Hurricane!
Our agricultural components, infrastructures, wetlands, canals, water management, and other exposed environmental concerns may take YEARS to recover after this potential Hyper El Niño when it hits South Florida this winter.
Zeke, really nice work. I was directed to this article from the "Just Have a Think"'s video. I added an interactive explainer for the SST anomalies here (https://vatsalbakshi.com/blog/2026-el-nino-daily/). Should update daily. I am not an expert in this area but a curious tinkerer and wanted to see what NOAA datasets looked like and how to render them interactively.
Zeke
I appreciate this evaluation using the surface data. However, much more can be learned from the information in the ocean below the surface. There anomalously high ocean temperatures remain in the equatorial zone in the eastern Pacific.
This is the Southern Hemisphere winter when the southeast trade winds are strongest and they extend across the equator. As it stands, the warmest waters are 165 to 170 W along the equator and it is not until about October that these can extend farther eastwards along the equator typically. So atmosphere and ocean coupling is present near the dateline and that is affecting teleconnections and weather patterns, but the full so-called Bjerknes coupling between the atmosphere and ocean can mainly occur after September when the southern hemisphere SSTs begin to rise. This is why the peaks in EN occur typically centered about December. But the biggest influences on teleconnections and warmest conditions occur some 3 months later typically in February. It then depends on whether the ocean runs out of heat, and the model results suggest they wont. But the models all do the annual cycle incorrectly.
Keep up the good work
Kevin
Thanks Kevin! It will be interesting to see how both model projections and conditions in the tropical Pacific evolve over the next month or two.
I didn't understand what can be (or already has been) learned from the information in the ocean below the surface in addition to what we learned from this article.
The last part of your comment reads like you don't really trust model predictions because they don't capture annual cycle correctly. (All models are wrong, as we all know.) The question is, why a quarter into XXI century, we still don't have models that do? Is it that hard?
The models do not do well in simulating precipitation and the ITCZ and SPCZ. Those are the organized convergence zones. Higher resolution helps, but I suspect it relates to the frequency, intensity and duration of convection and convection is not resolved. Models are tuned to get the amount about right but they do not get intensity or frequency right, and the SPCZ in particular occurs in the wrong place.
Not very closely, but I follow the research in this are for a very long time. The issues that you are citing plagued climate models from the very beginning of climate modeling and it doesn't like there was much of a progress despite exponentially growing speed of computers. Higher resolution helps, as you said, but not enough. Is there a fundamental limitation that we don't see at the moment?
Largest problem is computational power.
Further, El Nino strength is governed by regional circulation patterns which interact with global circulation patterns e.g. between the ocean surface and atmosphere.
Take for example the tropical Atlantic - currently we have a Atlantic Nina and cooler than normal tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures support El Ninos.
But a warmer tropical Atlantic during winter can terminate El Ninos if I'm not mistaken.
The temperatures of the tropical Atlantic can be governed by e.g. a massive marine heatwave in the North Atlantic which weakens the trade winds over the tropical Atlantic supporting a warming. This then can interact with a drying of the Amazon contributing to weakening trade winds over the tropical Atlantic.
Further, sea ice patterns can impact El Nino evolution. So e.g. take a El Nino in the making disturbing the circulation around the Antarctic - large wave in the jet, which then leads to a sea ice loss in a sector. and depending of where the loss occurs it can feed back differently on the El Nino.
And the heating patterns of the El Nino control the reaction of the walker circulation which are governed e.g. by surface winds letting one sector running hot while others are a bit cooler like we have it just now in the central Pacific.
Hence, to simulate the evolution of El Ninos is impossible doesn't matter the model resolution as you would have to simulate weather over the curse of many months with lots of local to regional amplifications over short times occurring somewhere over the planet all able to influence the tropical Pacific circulation.
That we get an extreme El Nino able to reach record territory is simply a energy budget that exist but how it will be realized let's see and watch...
Further, the higher the latent heat loss of the equatorial Pacific the lower the surface temperature expression could become. Hence it's a bit questionable to pin point El Nino strength on SSTAs as latent heat loss - evaporation - rules the game...
I never heard about the ice feedback before. Could you share a paper where it is discussed?
From my book:
The simplest idealized example of a positive feedback is that involving snow and ice. Surfaces covered in snow or ice are bright white and highly reflective of solar radiation. This is to say, they have a high albedo. As the temperatures increase, and snow and ice melt, leaving behind much darker ocean or land, more radiation is absorbed instead of reflected, and the temperature rises even more. Yet another feedback with snow is from dust and aerosols, which may be deposited on snow and make it darker, and hence more likely to melt as greater sunshine is absorbed.
However there are several things not quite right in the above comment. They are indeed "mistaken".
The Atlantic is small v the Pacific and its influences are similarly smaller.
Here is one study I collected:
The EL Nino 2015/16 disturbed sea ice in the eastern Ross, Amundsen, and Bellingshausen Seas via warmer Southern Hemisphere oceans.
"Conditions leading to the unprecedented low Antarctic sea ice extent during the 2016 austral spring season"; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074691
This should be a leading mechanism:
How the 2015/16 El Nino supported atmospheric rivers into Antarctica
"The Impact of the Extreme 2015–2016 El Niño on the Mass Balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet"; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL084466
And how atmospheric rivers can contribute to sea ice losses:
"The Role of Atmospheric Rivers in Antarctic Sea Ice Variations"; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL102588
Just the last week or so we had an event where the upper level forcing of the EL Nino had been injected into a large planetary wave in the South Pacific over extended time period and a blocking event happened way downstream injecting large amounts of warm and moist air into an sector where the winter time sea ice shrinked somewhat. Maybe here also a connection possible - looks interesting...
Further, what I observed is how atmospheric rivers moving in the South Pacific towards Antarctica and their convective centers modulated the planetary wave to make a wave - could have been diabatic heating via expanding upper level warm conveyor belts altering upper level temperature gradients and jet position. Moist processes come now into focus in jet stream modulation and it had been striking how the jet reacted to the forming convection centers.
Here a review on this emerging matter in atmospheric science:
"The importance of diabatic processes for the dynamics of synoptic-scale extratropical weather systems – a review"; https://wcd.copernicus.org/articles/5/1299/2024/
Here is a study on the Arctic sea ice:
"El Niño Events Enhance Melting of Sea Ice in the West of Greenland"; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL120460?af=R
Would guess that just by mid-latitude storm intensification El Nino's can contribute/trigger sea ice losses in specific sectors all depending on overall configurations?
Maybe even in a warmer climate with a warmer surface ocean at higher latitudes from the EL Nino originating poleward teleconnections could be enhanced as affected storm systems during winter have more energy to tap into?
Just wondering a bit around here.
But mid-latitude kinetic eddy energy increases during El Ninos as should poleward energy transport so.
And always happy if corrected if find the whole thematic highly fascinating...
Cheers!
Thank you for your expert assessment, Zeke! I wonder if the La Nina's will be as warm as the old El Ninos soon.
I mean, 1998 would be an exceptionally cool year if it occurred today. A very strong El Nino can temporally add around 0.2C to annual temperatures. Human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are effectively adding a permanent super-El Nino worth of heat to the climate system every decade.
It's uncharted territory now. Paleo climatology does not have the records of the absurd eco destruction that humanity has produced the last couple of hundred years give or take. I like the way you qualify your posts with phrases akin to "We can't be absolutely sure". That's honesty showing the tomorrows will be our Monday morning quarterbacks even though you do the best scientific analysis I am very climate anxious and firmly believe we gotta step up surface reflection and water desalination. Remember when years ago they said bad things will happen if we don't cut down on fossils? ( Am 68 and guilty of ignoring the plea). Well, I hope a plea would be to reflect and hydrate the lands now too.. above and beyond our lame drawdown.
I don't envy you in prediction calls. And, you wisely qualify possibilities.
As Earth 🔥 ( My Cronky That's the way it is" 😀 ).
Could you please clarify how independent those "thirteen independent modeling systems" are? You mentioned they are dynamical which I interpret as some sort of reduced set of Navier-Stokes Equations + thermodynamics. I can believe that the codes were written partially or fully independently but the physics encapsulated by these models cannot be really independent.
https://wcrp-cmip.org/cmip-phases/cmip7/
Irrelevant. CMIP7 models are not used for El Niño prediction.
I'm sorry-- I was trying to be quick and to point you to a resource that explains many of the model differences. Let me try again.
Seasonal forecast models and CMIP models are mostly different operational configurations of the exact same underlying Earth System Model codebase.
they operational, high-resolution, initialized versions of the broader modeling platforms being prepared for CMIP7. Understanding the differences in these models is exactly what the CMIP experiments work to understand. For example, GloSea in the UK runs the same code as HadGEM3.
The physics equations are the same! but teh numerical integration method may be different; the initial conditions and boundary conditions are certainly very approximate and may be different; the numerical time step and grid spacing are often different; the way you interpolate the upper atm boundary conditions, the landscape parameterizations, cloud approximations, crop albedo, aerosol parameterizations---- all of these can be handled differently by forecast models. There are hundreds of approximations. One modeling hope is that pattern matching to historical weather patterns maybe be faster and less computationally expensive, and some people are using AI models to explore this idea.
This video talks about a few, and you may find it informative for your question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlpHdkOJh9Y
I hope this is a more satisfactory answer.
I know there is a lot of inbreeding among the CMIP family. Essentially we have many versions of the same model, as you described it.
El Nino is a different beast though. Most advanced models are not used for El Nino forecasting for a reason: they are not good enough. (Which is an issue in itself but this is off-topic.)
I don't believe that AI will be helpful here but that's just an opinion.
Those 13 systems could also be close relatives but I don't know much about it so I asked.
The video is about about storms predictions, so not very relevant here unless El Nino forecasters are using similar methods.
And EVERYBODY remember Dr James Hansen predicted this as a SUPER-DUPER El Nino a couple of months back hands down. I like James and Zeke. They complement the truth.
I more or less made the same argument back in March. Even that early models suggested a potential record event this year (but our confidence has substantially increased now that we are outside the spring predictability barrier): https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-el-nino-cometh
You did indeed and sounded the alarms back in March. Same for '23. This is why we read you 😁. Glad there are people like you to help guide us as Earth 🔥.
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/yes-2026-is-on-track-to-be-the-hottest
In Indonesia I am already feel the impact of hyper El Nino - currently I experienced no rainfall since June 25 in Jakarta, Java and I expect the drought here in Java will intensify further towards year-end...
Doesn't this aggravate the salt water intrusion problem?
Hello everybody, I came across the 2024 study, "Deep ocean warming-induced El Niño changes" and wonder if the currently unfolding 2026 "super" El Nino is due to a tipping point, triggered by deep ocean warming, "specific patterns" in the tropical mean state have been found.
Quote: In particular, the deep ocean warming could increase convective extreme El Niño events by 40 to 80% relative to the current climate. Our findings suggest that anthropogenic greenhouse warming will have a prolonged impact on El Niño variability through delayed deep ocean warming, even if CO2 stabilization is achieved.
The efficiency of energy transfer from the deep ocean to the surface is closely related to ocean stratification, so deep ocean warming modulates irreversible SST changes in a unique pattern, e.g., El Niño-like warming.
Figure 1a, b show the changes in the tropical mean state from the PD (present day) period. Even when the CO2 concentration returns to current levels, the tropical mean state shows considerable differences. SST anomalies (SSTA) show positive signals across the tropics, indicating incomplete recovery and a warmer state compared to the present climate. In particular, El Niño-like warming (i.e., stronger warming in the eastern Pacific) is evident in the spatial pattern of the SST difference, which is similar to the slow response to global warming.
This result is consistent with all IW_EXPs, suggesting a release of heat from the deep ocean to the surface. In the eastern Pacific, a region of weak ocean stratification and intense upwelling, heat is much more efficiently transferred to the surface. The surface warming is further amplified by the Bjerknes feedback so that the surface warming is greater than the subsurface warming though the warming originated from the deep ocean warming. Therefore, the difference in the vertical temperature gradient is positive in the upper layer, suggesting enhanced ocean stratification
..results suggest that deep ocean warming triggers specific patterns in the tropical mean state, such as El Niño-like warming and southward shift of the ITCZ. As reported in the previous study, the deep ocean acts as a stove, continuously supplying heat to the ocean surface, and the efficiency of this process depends on ocean stratification. As a result, the energy from the deep ocean is more effectively transferred to the surface in the eastern Pacific, where stratification is weaker and climatological upwelling prevails. The initial warming over the eastern Pacific will be intensified by the Bjerknes feedback and the southward shift of the Pacific ITCZ. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50663-9
Quote: Even the human-made increase of SST matters because the magnitude of the SST anomaly relative to the surrounding climate presumably drives the Bjerknes feedback that causes the El Nino to grow and maintain its strong SST anomaly. https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/yes-2026-is-on-track-to-be-the-hottest
Quote: Bjerknes feedback – The close relationship between ocean temperatures and the strength of the trade winds was first identified by Jacob Bjerknes in 1969. Bjerknes also hypothesized that ENSO was a positive feedback system where the associated changes in one component of the climate system (the ocean or atmosphere) tend to reinforce changes in the other. This process is known as Bjerknes feedback. For example, during the growth of El Niño, the reduced contrast in ocean temperatures across the Pacific results in weaker trade winds, further reinforcing the El Niño state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño–Southern_Oscillation#Bjerknes_feedback
The way I understand this by natural philosophy if you will. Ocean stratification can't be avoided, the ocean is thermally conducive and it's not possible to add enough pressure to lock up excess energy as ice. Obviously impossible as sea level rise or reduction would be very different. When you compress something you generate heat, and as this expands it has a cooling effect. As soon as you have salt difference or weight different for other reason. You quicky end up in a situation where the thermal layers that réðust mixing get reinforced. What I'm truly baffled about is NASA reports on 8mm sea level rise, which is so far below the expected 4rmm for 2025( warm water being compressed outside of El Nino during La Núna), it's dunvfoubding. And they must have vetted this and discussed plausible explanations they leave out as the speculations that it is.
Foreshadowing. Won’t the actuaries jump into action to protect Capital. How can they risk the wealth of their wealthy patrons in this risk filled environment. The flight to safety will be wild, and might just stop oil. TWT
Merci pour la mise en situation , mais a part la colère et l'angoisse ressentis que puis-je faire. La réponse égoïste est probablement d'attendre la suite et de remercier le Ciel de ne pas avoir d'enfants à ma charge.
Ah, et mettez de la nourriture et de l'eau à disposition des animaux sauvages.
Informez tous ceux que vous connaissez au sujet du changement climatique.
Ensuite, faites un don de sang, ramassez des déchets, faites du bénévolat dans une banque alimentaire ou accomplissez une autre bonne action pour le monde.
Mar A Lago c'set chateau sous les mers - Nemo
> when global temperatures came in for August 2023 a full 0.5C warmer than any prior August on record
i think you may have meant September 2023.
Good catch! I've updated the post to fix it.
For us non-scientists, what are the effects and implications of a record El Nino on weather, farming etc in each key region of the world?
Forewarned is forearmed only if we know the correct action to take...
https://www.climate.us/ has reconstituted the former climate.gov site. It has good explainers about El Niño and temperature/ppt maps of previous events (for the US).
Copy-pasting:
El Niño most strongly impacts the southern United States, bringing wetter and cooler winters with increased flooding and severe weather, while the northern U.S. and Canada tend to be drier and warmer than usual. Globally, it causes droughts in Southeast Asia and Australia, heavy rains and flooding in parts of South America, and can suppress Atlantic hurricane activity.
Significant areas impacted by El Niño outside of the U.S. include parts of Central America, northern Brazil, India, and Australia, where it can cause droughts and extreme weather conditions. Additionally, regions like Indonesia and the Philippines often experience changes in rainfall patterns due to El Niño.
Hi, many of us have only just started hearing about el Nino 3.4. I understand that both El Nino and La nina are warm and cool phases of the el Nino Southern Oscillation that's due to atmospheric circulation changes.
el Nino 3.4 is a particular, static geographically, area in the Pacific? Where SSTs are taken as an indicator of Nino/Nina strength? It's usually? always? the warmest part of the ocean or this area is used as the standard?
Many thanks
Jo
Nino 3.4 anomalies are calculated based on a specific region of the tropical Pacific from 5° N to 5° S and 120° W to 170° W. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/enso/sst
Thank you. And this region was chosen because it's some sort of indicator?
Yep, El Nino events have a specific spatial structure (see the maps in this post), and that region sits in the middle of it.
What, if any, implications does this El Niño have for the whole “acceleration” debate? I know some claim that El Niño operates as a “stair-step” pushing global temps ever upward. Is that accurate? Besides for the short-term implications of this record El Niño, I am confused as to what the long-term implications might be.
By itself, not that much. Rigorous analyses of acceleration should try and remove the effects of short-term internal variability like El Niño and La Niño (though this can be challenging in practice). There is a robust debate about the effects of climate change on El Niño, but my sense is there is no clear consensus that climate change has intensified events (at least beyond the long-term background warming).
Thanks! So the idea that El Niño acts as a “stair step” for global temps is not persuasive? I see this idea in doomer circles online all the time. Usually the claim is accompanied by something like the attached chart which does make El Niño events look like temporary jumps that push warming upwards. I understand that this is probably not the correct way of looking at the situation.
But what if we never get under 1.5C again after this El Niño? I suppose that’s a whole other question….
I mean, it does in the sense that El Ninos tend to follow La Ninas that suppress temperatures, so you end up with a stair-step pattern superimposed on a long term trend. But El Nino and La Nina are not forcings – they don't provide any sustained heating or cooling for the climate system after the events end.
El Niño events regulate temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean so that rising temperature trends are lacking in the tropical Pacific. During the cold phase with relatively clear skies, solar radiation heats up the upper tropical Pacific Ocean, but the south-easterly trade winds redistribute the heat through wind-driven currents, with most of it carried west to become stored in the deep Warm Pool or subtropical ocean.
During El Niño, the stored heat is first transported eastwards, warming the central and eastern Pacific and changing the Walker Circulation. Energy is then transported out of the tropics within the ocean toward higher latitudes in response to the changing currents, and through the atmosphere. The ocean cools mainly from increased evaporation which is realized as latent heat in rainfall in the atmosphere. Added rainfall contributes to a general warming of the global atmosphere that peaks a few months after a strong El Niño event and leads to an increase in GMST.
Thank you very much, Dr. Trenberth, for that lucid explanation of something I've long wondered about!
Now I have another: are the trade winds being altered as the excess greenhouse warming circulates around the globe? Shifting latitudes as the Hadley cells expand poleward, perhaps?
Changes are afoot. With a warming climate and higher sea temperatures, convection tends to be stronger and taller (ITCZ and SPCZ and monsoon rains). The result is an expansion of the subtropics and a shift of the jet stream and mid latitude storm tracks polewards. The trade winds lie between the subtropics high pressures and the convergence zones, with the southeast trades typically expanding across the equator (the ITCZ lies between 5 and 10N normally). The wider expanse of subsiding air into the subtropics increases sunshine and heating and is a positive feedback. Hansen and others have blamed this on changes in aerosols, but it is much more from changes in clouds and circulation.
"The wider expanse of subsiding air into the subtropics increases sunshine and heating and is a positive feedback." Would then be there "the wider" expanse of upwelling air near equator, which _IF_ proportional (comparable area affected)- would more than offset the warming effect on the subsiding end?
Thank you, Dr. Trenberth! I'll pass this on in a comment thread I'm in at realclimate.org.
see
Global temperature rises in steps – here’s why we can expect a steep climb this year and next. 12 July 2023
https://doi.org/10.64628/AA.75nadgn7u
https://theconversation.com/global-temperature-rises-in-steps-heres-why-we-can-expect-a-steep-climb-this-year-and-next-209385
Yeah this is pretty much my concern. “values will never quite go back to previous levels.” So we might touch 2C with this crazy El Niño and then never go back down?
Dr.Hausfather seems to disagree with this framing though.
But figures like James Hansen will view whatever happens after this record breaking El Niño as evidence that global warming is accelerating way beyond even what the previous WMO report indicated (.27/decade). Is that accurate? If so, yikes.
AFAICT, Dr. Hausfather doesn't disagree with describing the GMST trend as a 'stair-step' shape punctuated by ENSOs, he merely says the latter is not a physical forcing of the GMST trend, but unforced (as far as is known yet) variation around it. See his reply to Theodore Rethers.
When you add a cycle (sine wave) to an upward trend, it *sorta* looks like a "stair-step" function.
"Kevin Trenberth (😉): Up the Temperature Staircase"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXwZdcckkm4
So, why is it so strong? Just normal variability, or does climate change affect El Niño intensity?
Its a bit unclear if climate change is making strong El Nino events more likely (normalizing for long-term warming). It is strongly debated on the literature with no clear consensus.
No, see the later Brink article: "...more water vapor and heating strengthens convection making it taller and narrower, and broadens the subsidence regions in the subtropics and extratropics,"
So the wider subsiding area is because oif more intense convection.
Kevin Trenberth
Here in South Florida, most people are jumping up and down with joy due to the suppression of potential hurricanes by the ENSO event, AND the current La Niña in the Atlantic which is further inhibiting tropical storm development.
Unfortunately, most don't understand that while hurricanes... which are very focused on their paths...may be inhibited this year, the REAL danger is what will happen in the coming WINTER!
I am a sitting member of the Natural Resources Board in Sebastian, FL, and we are getting hyper focused on what this potentially record-breaking Hyper El Niño will bring to Florida, and specifically to the Treasure Coast this winter. Rain totals are likely to well-exceed typical summer totals over 3-4 months with massive storms, nocturnal tornados, extensive beach erosion, and extreme potential damage to the ecosystem of the Indian River Lagoon.
With Nitrogen and Phosphorous fertilizer runoff from lawns with flood waters into the lagoon, there is the likelihood of severe algae blooms that will not dissipate due to constant overcast, and that will affect the very important sea grass that our Manatees depend on, while also killing massive number of fish, and potentially wipe out our oyster beds. We have spent YEARS improving the conditions and protection of the Lagoon, but this winter can potentially undo al the work we have done..and even potentially kill hundreds of manatees.
We are currently putting pressure on the City and County officials to enact an emergency Fertilizer BLACKOUT from Nov 1st through Feb 28th. We already do this in the summer months from June 1st to September 30th, but this year, it is critical to keep nitrogen and phosporous fertilizers off of residential, park, and even golf course properties this winter because dormant winter grass and winter hard pan, will make rain run off ground as if they were pavement... and then into swales, to flooding and eventually into the Indian River Lagoon, causing massive additional damage to what will already likely occur with the desalinization of the waters of the lagoon.
This is a MUCH bigger event coming our way than a "Potential" Tropical Storm or Hurricane!
Our agricultural components, infrastructures, wetlands, canals, water management, and other exposed environmental concerns may take YEARS to recover after this potential Hyper El Niño when it hits South Florida this winter.
Zeke, really nice work. I was directed to this article from the "Just Have a Think"'s video. I added an interactive explainer for the SST anomalies here (https://vatsalbakshi.com/blog/2026-el-nino-daily/). Should update daily. I am not an expert in this area but a curious tinkerer and wanted to see what NOAA datasets looked like and how to render them interactively.