Research: Global Warming Increases El Niño Intensity
A recent study has revealed that climate change is strengthening El Niño. In research published in the journal Science, scientists found that the strength of El Niño is now 36 per cent greater than in the pre-industrial era.
Over the last 40 years, the strength of this natural phenomenon has increased by up to 16 per cent. These findings were published as the strongest El Niño in recent decades is predicted to occur in the coming months.
El Niño is a natural phenomenon occurring when Pacific waters warm up. This phenomenon can alter weather patterns across the globe and increase the risk of extreme weather, such as heatwaves, floods, and droughts.
“These findings are important because the impact of strong El Niño on climate disasters and extreme weather worldwide is increasingly intensifying,” said Julia Cole, a paleoclimate scientist from the University of Michigan and the study’s lead author, on Thursday (3/9/2026).
Cole stated that the research began when she and her team sought to understand why the impact of El Niño on climate disasters is becoming more powerful. They subsequently matched global temperature surges with changes in El Niño strength and its impact on extreme weather.
“We found that the increasing strength of El Niño parallels the surge in global temperatures caused by human activity through the burning of fossil fuels,” said Cole.
She began the research by tracing El Niño data back 900 years. “El Niño is the most severe aspect of global climate variation; its impacts range from the collapse of local fisheries and the killing of coral reefs to severe droughts and global food scarcity,” said Boris Worm, a marine scientist from Dalhousube University who was not involved in Cole’s research.
Worm recalled the warning of climate scientist Wallace Broecker that “the climate system is a wild beast and we are poking it with a stick.” He likened greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels to the stick humans are using to disturb the climate system. “The fury of El Niño could threaten our collective safety,” he said.
El Niño strength is determined based on sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific near the equator, compared to the average normal temperature over three months. El Niño occurs when temperatures are at least 0.5 degrees Celsius above normal conditions.
If the temperature is 2 degrees Celsius higher, El Niño is categorised as very strong. According to Columbia University’s El Niño tracker, Pacific water temperatures in recent weeks have reached 2.7 degrees Celsius above normal and are expected to continue rising over the next two to four months.