NWS forecasts 97% chance El Niño persists through spring 2027
The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center issued an advisory Thursday stating that models now show an 81% chance that a very strong El Niño “that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950” will develop before the end of the year. The agency placed a 97% probability on the conditions persisting through early spring 2027.
“The odds and the magnitudes just keep rising,” climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a broadcast discussion Thursday. Swain said the observed conditions are already in record-breaking territory. “El Niño so far, for the calendar date, is as strong or stronger than we’ve ever seen before, and that is a trajectory that is expected to continue,” he said.
El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon marked by warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which disrupts atmospheric circulation patterns. It alters jet streams and shifts precipitation belts, producing heavier storms in some regions and drought in others.
A so-called “super El Niño” — defined by sea surface temperatures at least 2°C (3.6°F) above average — would carry enormous potential to disrupt weather worldwide, scientists said. The 2015 super El Niño brought severe drought in Ethiopia, water supply shortages in Puerto Rico, and a record-breaking hurricane season in the central-north Pacific, according to an analysis by U.S. federal scientists. The pattern typically produces drought and heat across Australia, southern and central Africa, India, and parts of South America including the Amazon rainforest, while heavy precipitation could hit the southern tier of the United States, parts of the Middle East, and south-central Asia.
The updated forecast arrives as the United States and Europe already contend with extreme heat. Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), with several countries breaking all-time temperature records. More than 3,700 excess deaths were recorded across France, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
In the United States, 20 states recorded temperatures above 100°F (38°C) during a heat dome over the Fourth of July holiday last week, causing at least dozens of deaths and millions of emergency room visits. A heat dome is also forecast to expand over the U.S. West and into the central plains, bringing higher temperatures.
On Thursday, firefighters were battling 38 large wildfires across the country. More than 3.4 million acres (1.4 million hectares) have already burned in the U.S. this year.
“June 2026 underscored how profoundly the climate is changing,” Dr. Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said in a statement. “The result is increasingly intense heatwaves, a persistently warm ocean, and growing risks for people, ecosystems and infrastructure.”