The El Nino weather phenomenon is set to gather pace, with extreme conditions expected to last into 2027, the World Meteorological Organisation said on Thursday.
The UN weather agency said its forecast indicates a near 100 per cent chance that El Nino will persist until February, fuelled by exceptionally warm Pacific Ocean temperatures.
A powerful El Nino can affect worldwide rainfall and temperature patterns significantly, and fuel extreme weather, such as typhoons and tropical cyclones.
“El Nino is being supersized before our eyes,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. “The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters and those waters are heating up.
“The race now is between rising risks and our commitment to take climate action and protect people. We must win that race.”
Celeste Saulo, WMO secretary general, said that if El Nino's current trajectory continues, "it may be stronger than anything since our monitoring began, so literally off the charts that we have used for the past four decades".
El Nino will peak at the end of 2026 but its effect on global temperatures will be felt long after that. "The powerful 2023-2024 La Nina contributed to 2024 being the warmest year on record. We should not be surprised if this record is broken," she said.
Wilfran Okia, head of climate prediction services at the WMO, said that the organisation's forecasting systems show that El Nino's magnitude will be "above plus 2°C".
El Nino is a periodic warming of sea-surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific, caused by weakening trade winds. It occurs naturally every two to seven years and tends to last for up to 12 months, often causing intense rain and droughts across Latin America.
This year's phenomenon has already hit soft commodities in tropical areas, causing a severe food crisis across Central America's Dry Corridor. It is set to peak towards the end of this year, the WMO said in a statement.
In Indonesia, toxic haze from El Nino-fuelled wildfires has affected people across South-East Asia, including in neighbouring Malaysia and the Philippines.
Last month, Copernicus, the European Union’s climate-change agency, said sea-surface temperatures around the world reached the highest level on record in July, partly because of the El Nino effect.
"What is striking is that the warming is not confined to the sea surface," Mr Okia said. "There is a large reservoir of heat beneath the surface and in some places we measure a value of around plus 8°C."
