FORECASTERS PREDICT STRONGEST SUPER EL NINHO.
By Reuters-Sustainable Switch-By Sharon Kits - August 21, 2026
Hello!
Forecasters around the world have confirmed that the developing El Niño weather pattern is likely to be the strongest in living memory. As a quick refresher, the El Niño phenomenon is caused by unusually warm waters in the Pacific Ocean which naturally occurs every two to seven years and can cause more rainfall in certain areas or drought in others. Britain's Met Office national weather forecaster said 2026 is going to be renowned for the development of the largest El Niño in living memory and what is probably the largest such event since the 19th century. The Met Office said 2027 is very likely to replace 2024 as the warmest year on record. Their latest forecasts showed a more than 3 degrees Celsius rise in equatorial Pacific sea-surface temperatures later this year. A typical El Niño causes a rise of 1 C to 2 C, with 2 C considered a major event.
China's National Climate Centre said that the formation of a super El Nino could be the strongest ever recorded. Since the start of the summer, China has already seen the effects of an El Nino, including torrential rain in various regions. Last week, the strongest typhoon to hit China this year, Typhoon Dolphin, unleashed extreme rain across the country's eastern, central and northern regions, far from the coast where it made landfall following a two-week journey across the Pacific Ocean. Elsewhere, heavy rains linked to the El Niño weather phenomenon caused flooding in Peru this week that disrupted access to the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, closed roads due to landslides and flooded homes in the capital Lima.Climate Buzz
- Europe's hottest town says climate change is reshaping daily life
Residents of Floridia, an Italian town in the Province of Syracuse, Sicily, have been struggling to adapt to the extreme heat temperatures. Five years ago, Floridia broke a record when it hit 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in August 2021 which turned the Sicilian town into a symbol of Europe's warming climate. This year, Reuters Climate Monitor data showed Floridia reached 2.8 C above the average in July from the 1961-1990 historic norm. Click here to read about residents' concerns around heat affecting health and local traditions.
- Japanese men turn to hair removal in scorching summer
In keeping with the theme of extreme heat changing daily life, click here for an insightful read on how Japanese men are turning to hair removal to survive the sweltering heat leading to a surge in business for grooming clinics.
- Singapore's plan to clear forest for housing faces a backlash
Singapore said in July it was looking to clear two-thirds of the 23-hectare (57-acre) Maju Forest to build more public housing. But the announcement triggered an outcry from residents, leading to more than 49,000 people signing two petitions that urged the government to build on brownfield land, such as golf courses and former commercial and institutional sites, and redevelop older public housing estates at higher densities. Click here to read the government’s response and more.
- Serbia turns to Russia to help fight wildfires
A Russian Emergencies Ministry IL-76P firefighting plane landed in Serbia’s southern city of Nis this week to tackle a wildfire in the Deliblatska Pescara natural protected reserve that has raged for weeks. Serbia also has access to emergency EU help under the bloc's Civil Protection Mechanism, even though the country is not a member of the European Union. The plane's arrival is another sign of Serbia's balancing act between Russia, with which it has historical ties, and the EU, which it hopes to join.
- West Africa cocoa sector struggles to meet EU anti-deforestation rules, raising supply concerns
Industry experts estimate that when the EU Deforestation Regulation comes into effect at the end of December, farmers across West Africa, including top grower Ivory Coast and Nigeria, would struggle to comply with the law which could squeeze the region's exports to the EU and lead to higher costs for its chocolate makers and its buyers. Click here for the full story. Amid a coastal breeze and summer sunshine, a corporate volunteer team joined more than 16,000 New Yorkers who have worked with the Billion Oyster Project, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring oyster reefs in New York Harbor. Click here, to watch the full video.
- The Science Based Targets initiative’s (SBTi) flagship Net Zero Standard has undergone its first major update, prompting a mixed response from the climate community. Click here to find out more in a piece by Ethical Corp Magazine contributor Oliver Balch.
- Hungary’s record solar output is helping to shield its power system from the worst effects of the forced cutbacks after the country's only nuclear power plant had to drastically lower output following a drop in water levels on the Danube River. Click here to read the full piece by Reuters global energy transition columnist Gavin Maguire.
Climate Lens-Human-caused climate change has added about 2 C of warming to the Mediterranean and around 1.4 C to Western European seas, according to an analysis by scientists at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, which uses peer-reviewed methods to assess global warming's role in extreme weather events. Last month, the average temperature in the Mediterranean was 27 degrees Celsius (81 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest for any July on record, while an offshore buoy near Mallorca recorded 33 C in early August. Click here for the full analysis by Reuters.
Sri Lanka's government has arranged to receive water across seven districts as the country tackles a drought linked to this year's severe El Niño, a senior official said.
Thomson Reuters
Sharon is the creator, curator and editor of the Reuters Sustainable Switch newsletter and the Sustainable Business vertical on Reuters.com. She joined Reuters after a stint as the Inclusive Economies Editor at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She enjoys writing about the intersection between climate and social injustice and can be contacted via email for ESG-related queries.
STRONGEST SUPER EL NINHO
World News -Kit Robe- 15:54 21 Aug 2026 GMT+1
Strongest Super El Niño 'in living memory' will have on most impacted area in world. The El Niño will have a huge impact all around the globe.
The coming months have been forecast to see what scientists now expect to be one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded. This cycle began in June and is predicted to last until 2027, and many have taken to referring to the event as a 'Super El Niño' to reflect the sheer scale of the weather events it is likely to cause. El Niño is part of the cycle of the heating and cooling of the surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean, called the ENSO cycle, and has a big impact on weather events around the world. This has the 'neutral' phase, the cooling phase, La Niña, and the heating phase, El Niño.
Depending on where you are this could mean floods or droughts and wildfires, with the impact crossing continents even when the El Niño is not an extraordinarily strong one. But now scientists have predicted that the Pacific surface temperature is set to rise by a record amount, a circumstance which is likely to lead to extreme weather. While El Niño is not caused by climate change, the impacts of climate including rising ocean temperatures and greater vulnerability to extreme weather can exacerbate the impact that El Niño has.
El Niño can leads to increased flood risk. El Niño will have an impact around the world in different ways, but some regions are more vulnerable to the more extreme effects than others. South America and South-East Asia are areas which are especially vulnerable to El Niño, so how does it affect these areas? While the nature of it makes it difficult to predict precisely, the Central America and the northern parts of South America, which includes the Amazon Rainforest, typically experience a drier climate during El Niño, Carbon Brief reported. Meanwhile the southern parts of the continent more often experience an increase in rainfall. As a result of that countries such as Colombia, Venezuela, and the north of Brazil are at an increased risk of wildfires, with southern Brazil, northern Argentina, and and Chile vulnerable to severe flooding.
Meanwhile, south-east Asia is more vulnerable to very dry conditions, meaning that it is at a heightened risk of wildfires. Different areas can also see dryer conditions with an increased wildfire riskNonetheless, no two El Niño events are exactly the same, so their precise impact can be hard to predict. While South America and South-East Asia are especially vulnerable to the impact of El Niño, that doesn't mean that the UK will not be affected by it. The UK's Met Office has said that the UK weather is likely to be affected by the EL Niño, with experts saying that this is unusual. Professor Adam Scaife is the head of long-range forecasts at the Met Office, and told the BBC: "I have not seen an event like this developing in our forecasts before."He added that weather forecasters in the UK 'already see signals for increased rainfall and storminess in autumn here in the UK'.
It comes after the UK experienced another summer of extreme heat, with emergency services scrambling to contain wildfires as hot and dry ground became particularly susceptible.
World News, El Niño, WeatherKit
Roberts- Home-News-Science- Published 11:44 11 Aug 2026 GMT+1
Menacing sign shows ‘Super El Niño’ is about to get even worse as scientists make worrying prediction 2026 could soon become the hottest year on record with thousands of heat-related deaths. The menacing 'Super El Niño' weather event could now become even worse as 'extreme heat' continues to grip the world with scientists now making worrying predictions. Confirmed to be happening back in June, El Niño occurs when ocean temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific become unusually warm, disrupting the wider climate.
The heatwaves roiling Western Europe this summer have now broken an average temperature record for the June-July period set in 2022, according to the European climate agency Copernicus, causing 'prolonged hot and dry' conditions across much of the continent." July also saw the highest sea surface temperature (SST) ever recorded for July across the extra-polar oceans, partly fueled by developing El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific," Copernicus said. Temperatures in the Pacific Ocean have also risen enough for this to be considered an El Nino (NOAA Satellite)
