2026 Super El Niño

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22618025/ radio clip

https://www.rte.ie/news/environment/2026/0602/1576289-el-nino-un/ article

An outside possibility is Ireland getting a tropical storm/hurricane spin off from the Atlantic like Ophelia.

There was an 1877 Super El Nino that heavily impacted several regions' food production at the time, causing many deaths from hunger, today we have better food systems but a lot more people and modern agriculture is still very dependent on a reliable climate.

Given the world is heating up, it's also important to see how already elevated global temperatures increase the potential impacts of the extra heat from the expected El Nino in the next twelve months and how much the baseline global temperature is shifted upwards coming out of it.

It could be 2027 when the broader impacts are most felt.

Talking of ocean currents and heat transfers, Ireland has its own concerns scientists are flagging around a weakening of the AMOC which brings the heat that provides us with our milder Winters and helps bring plenty of moisture.

2017 started with a weak la nina, moved marginally positive (neutral) over the Summer and went back to a weak la nina by the Autumn. My thinking on another tropical storm/hurricane getting closer to Ireland again is that the more heat in the system the more likely these events are going to be. They need warmer water to sustain their cohesion for the journey further north. There's some extra heat in the water along a potential path south south west of Ireland which is worth keeping an eye on for whether it heats up or otherwise relatively speaking. Countering that this year, the el nino does tend to limit tropical storm formation, hence the mostly lower than average hurricane season forecast. There's an argument that this super el nino rather sets the table for a future year of neutral/la nina that produces another such storm using the extra heat in the system and more favourable wind and moisture conditions. There comes a point when the extra heat in the system puts what we value in danger and my fear is that we are not acting commensurate to that danger yet and that this super el nino on top of existing extra heating will begin to expose frailties in global food supplies which in turn negatively impacts the architecture of modern societies.

The 2026 El Nino has formed and is expected to gain in strength. NOAA

The probabilities point to a very strong El Nino towards the end of the year, start of next year.

As sryanbruen has above, the direct impact is potentially to be a warmer wetter winter. The broader global impact of a very strong El Nino should result in some areas getting a lot wetter and others getting a lot less rain and that could severely impact food production in several nations. Add that food production reduction to the problems currently impacting fertiliser supplies and the cumulative increase in global heat already impacting on global food systems and it could be a major impact on the supply of food. In Ireland that would be more price increases rather than significant shortages but in some parts of the world it could put severe pressure on a basic level of food for populations. Food price hikes, food shortages make people angry and desperate and that is destabilising for nations states which turns a weather crisis into a societal crisis and the heating humanity is putting into the system keeps making that more likely. The truth is because this El Nino could be unprecedented and indications are pointing in that direction, so the impacts could be unprecedented in directions/intensities that haven't been felt before. With the extra heat in the system, there's more energy for tropical storms but the nature of heat in the Nino area of the Pacific means the main development area of the Atlantic Hurricanes is suppressed, but it's still expected that there'll be 8-14 named storms. How the Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures manifest over the season will contribute to where and how intensely they will develop.