Yves here. It’s hard to know what can be done to mitigate the personal effects of El Niño even if you are not on the tracks in front of this freight train, as farmers are. Many have pointed out that even though it will be strongest in late summer and fall, it will continue for another nine months to a year. The effects on planting and crop yields will thus persist through the 2027 spring and summer planting season. Tom Neuburger describes below that super El Niño have durable climate effects.
By Tom Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
A line of severe storms rolls into Chicago’s Austin neighborhood from the west along West Madison Street, Aug. 11, 2026 (ABC News). Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
This is a follow-up to our latest climate report (“A Record El Niño Is Coming”). There we talked about this summer’s unprecedented jump in sea surface temperature and noted the rising heat through much of the world.
We’re not alone in alarm; a number of publications have noted how unusual the coming El Niño will be and what it might bring. For example:
• Newsweek: El Niño Breaking 176-Year Record: The Impact on Florida, Texas, California
A potentially historic El Niño is strengthening in the Pacific, raising the prospect of shifting weather patterns across parts of the U.S., including changes in rain, storm risk and tropical activity affecting Florida, Texas and California.
Florida meteorologist Matt Devitt said in a Monday post on X that forecasts suggest this El Niño could surpass anything seen since at least 1850, potentially setting a 176-year benchmark.
While El Niño begins in the tropical Pacific, its effects can reshape weather patterns across the U.S.
The Devitt X post shows this:
How to read the chart: The numbers down the middle show the strength of each El Niño measured by how much temperature increase it caused. The predicted +2.65°C (4.77°F) is a lot for a weather system to absorb. The 2015-2016 event is estimated to have caused up to $90 billion in global damage directly, and the long-term effects of super El Niño disruptions run into the trillions.
In addition, the forecast above could be quite conservative. According to a similar article in Wired, “median temperatures for the Niño 3.4 region [a defined region of the Pacific] could reach 3.6 degrees Celsius above normal—even after accounting for the effects of long-term global warming” (emphasis mine).
For a sense of what this looks like graphically, here’s a chart from James Hansenshowing the current temperatures (in red) charted with some of the previous “super” El Niños. (Note: Hansen uses a different measurable than the standard El Niño measurement — he uses the temperature of the upper 300 meters of the ocean instead of just surface temperature — so his numbers are slightly different.)
If the worst predictions are right, the red line will break above the top of the graph.
Below is a chart from NOAA that shows El Niño and La Niña temperature departures going back to 1950 (click to enlarge).
Gives a sense of the sweep of things, doesn’t it?
What to Expect
As to what to expect this year and next:
- El Niños often mean fewer Atlantic hurricanes, but more and stronger Pacific typhoons (see here).
- Since the Pacific jet stream moves further south and east, the southern U.S. is made more wet and cold, and northern U.S. warmer and dry.
- Southern U.S. tornadoes may be stronger, and other storms stronger and more frequent.
- Economic effects can be great and unpredictable. According to Wired, “the 1997–98 El Niño resulted in a cumulative loss of approximately $5.7 trillion over the following five years.”
The Coming, Increasing Disaster
But the greatest effect may be on the longer-term climate system. Global warming, we know, is already accelerating. According to Hansen, the rate of temperature change has moved like this (see second chart here):
- 1970-2010 — 0.18°C / decade
- 2010-present (with no El Niño this year) — 0.30°C / decade
- 2010-present (with “super” El Niño this year) — 0.41°C / decade
Hansen’s rate has now been confirmed. Tweets by Ben See and Mike Hudema tell us this (annotations mine):
The average rate of warming from these five calculations is 0.43 degrees Celsius per decade, with the outlier at 0.48 (outliers are more often right than wrong in today’s keep-everyone-calm messaging game).
Which means that warming of +1.5°C will happen this year if it hasn’t happened already; that warming of +2.0°C will occur within 10 years; and that warming of +2.5°C will occur in the 2040s.
Almost everyone now alive will live through this.
What to Do
What to do is a topic on its own. I’ve written a little about it, and will write more in due course. But to short-form my own thoughts, do this:
- Stop trying to “fix” global warming. We’ll never get back to the always-growth capitalist world, the exploitive, predatious world of monsters with money and big-screen/smart-phone convenience. It’s will go, it can’t be preserved, and there are more good things to do than to fail to preserve it.
- Start building a good world based on what will remain, on what the new world will be. In football terms, don’t throw the ball to where the receiver is now. Throw it to where he will be. In this case, “where he will be” is after the real storm has struck. (Okay, a seriously mixed metaphor, but you get it, I’m sure.)
- Embrace courage, not fear. Humans were born resilient. Embrace your resilience as a positive thing.
- Mourn the death of this life, but rejoice in the life being born. There’s a lot packed into that statement, some visible, some surprisingly not. But start with this: Our happiness doesn’t depend on TVs and cars.
More to come. I hope you stay tuned.
