‘Chances remain high for a historic event’: El Niño is strengthening, forecasters warn

(NEXSTAR) – We already knew this year’s El Niño was shaping up to be the strongest in recorded history, but now forecasters are warning that the weather pattern is only getting stronger.

In its latest discussion on Thursday, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said El Niño “strengthened further last month,” with “a strong-to-very strong El Niño likely” from January through March.

Multiple models have shown that El Niño is expected to continue strengthening through the end of the year.

“Chances remain high for a historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950,” the latest guidance from the CPC explained. “With an event of this magnitude, the chances of experiencing impacts consistent with El Niño are larger, though not guaranteed.”

Late last month, Columbia University climate scientist Azhar Ehsan, in a briefing to the media, provided a chart showing the probability of El Niño lasting until spring was “100% to 99%.”

“I wrote near-certain but it’s 100%,” he said at the time.

As it has been, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center agrees El Niño is 100% sticking around for about six more months, though a La Niña pattern may not be too far away (denoted by the blue bar).

El Niño is on track to reach its peak in December, the latest Global Seasonal Climate Update from the World Meteorological Organization shows. The report suggests sea-surface temperatures are only expected to “increase to record levels” between now and December, according to a press release.

“El Niño doesn’t add new heat to the planet. It releases heat the ocean has already been storing beneath the surface – which is why a strong event so often becomes one of the hottest years measured (as with 2024),” WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo told the Global Heat Forum in Bangkok. “The ocean it’s drawing from is the warmest we’ve ever measured it. There is simply more heat available to release.”

This strong, long-lasting El Niño is expected to have a “pretty substantial impact” on the weather we see over the next several months, Brian James, Nexstar chief meteorologist, said last month.

As we head into winter, how El Niño plays out will be very different for the northern half of the country and the southern half. Broadly speaking, the northern states will be drier and warmer than normal, while southern states will be cooler and wetter.

“Based on what I am seeing now, I am officially concerned,” Daniel Swain, a prominent climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources, said on social media earlier this week, as reported by Nexstar’s KTLA. “We’ve never seen an event this big before in the context of our rapidly warming climate … The warning lights are flashing.”

California has already declared a state of emergency for the impending weather pattern while crews in Los Angeles are working to prepare for its impacts.

Ehsan said in a September media briefing that this year’s atmospheric evolution looks similar to that of 1997, when one of the strongest-ever El Niños formed. That winter was characterized by broken records and “unusual extremes,” climate researchers said in an April 1998 National Climatic Data Center report.

It was the country’s second-warmest and seventh-wettest winter since 1895, and the super-strong El Niño contributed to chaotic weather from coast to coast.

The temperature and precipitation outlooks for the rest of the year are also in line with a classic El Niño pattern.