Scientists Say This El Nino Could Be Strongest on Record

Coral bleaching at Kiritimati, floods in Peru and Chile and drought in India and Ethiopia are already being linked to the warming Pacific.

2026-08-31 06:52 UTC

Scientists Say This El Nino Could Be Strongest on Record — The Atlantic

The Hot Box in the Pacific

Water temperatures in a stretch of the equatorial Pacific known as Nino 3.4 have climbed far above normal, and forecasters expect the current El Nino to become the strongest ever recorded, according to The Atlantic and Phys.org.

El Nino is a temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific. It is declared when a three month average sits 0.5 degrees Celsius, or 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, above normal. Anything at 2 degrees Celsius is classed as very strong.

Phys.org reports that the most recent weekly figure reached 2.7 degrees Celsius, or 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit, and is expected to keep climbing.

Coral, Floods and Drought

Kristina Tietjen, a researcher in the lab of Canadian scientist Julia Baum at the University of Victoria, spent most of August diving at Kiritimati, the world's largest atoll. She told The Atlantic the water felt like a baby pool and that her team needed only rash guards rather than wetsuits.

Waters around Kiritimati have run 3 to 4 degrees Celsius above normal. Tietjen's team found this month that nearly half of the island's remaining corals had already bleached, which can precede death if the warmth continues. During the 2015 to 2016 El Nino, 90 percent of the atoll's coral reef died.

The Atlantic also reports torrential rains and landslides on the Pacific coast of South America that forced the temporary closure of a main route to Machu Picchu in Peru, deadly floods in arid northern Chile, and some of the driest summers on record in India and Ethiopia.

A Study Linking Strength to Emissions

A study published in the journal Science, reported by Phys.org, finds El Ninos are more than 36 percent stronger than before the industrial age began in the mid 1800s, with a 16 percent jump in the last 40 years.

Lead author Julia Cole, a paleoclimate scientist at the University of Michigan, said the increase closely parallels the rise in global temperature caused by human activity such as burning fossil fuels. Her team examined roughly 900 years of El Nino history.

Boris Worm, a marine scientist at Dalhousie University who was not involved, said El Nino is the most violent aspect of climate variability worldwide, citing fisheries collapse, coral die-offs, drought and food shortages.

California Preparations

In Novato, north of San Francisco, the Lemon Aide Project, a Marin and Sonoma nonprofit focused on emergency preparedness, is urging residents to ready go bags and plan two evacuation routes, ABC7 San Francisco reports. Co-founder Shannon Parkhurst said her own neighborhood has been underwater before.

Marin County Public Works is dredging about two miles of the Novato Creek channel. Director Chris Blunk said crews expect to remove 20,000 cubic yards of material, with each cubic yard about the size of a washing machine.

Crews are also clearing storm drains and reinforcing levees. Officials are watching forecasts for king tides during the holiday season. It is not yet known how much rain the coming winter will actually bring.

Scientists Say This El Nino Could Be Strongest on Record

The Hot Box in the Pacific

Coral, Floods and Drought

A Study Linking Strength to Emissions

California Preparations

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