El Niño could be unprecedented in strength and off the charts of what has been seen in the last four decades, the head of the United Nations weather agency said.
El Nino is expected to bring a wave of heat to some areas and disrupt rain patterns, sparking severe drought, while in other areas it could cause flooding, said Celeste Saulo, who is Secretary-General for the World Meteorological Organization.
Its new seasonal outlook report, published on Wednesday, predicts the El Niño event will become extremely strong, with ocean temperatures in the central Pacific rising about 3.8°C above normal on average between November 2026 and January 2027, peaking around December 2026.
"We have not seen in our records 3.8. We have seen around 3 in some record El Ninos before, with very substantive impacts across the world. So we are beyond that limit," Saulo said.
El Niño-linked weather extremes could worsen pressure on housing, water, sanitation and health services, with flooding risks rising in southern Africa from November. In Southeast Asia warmer conditions and a lack of rainfall could impact agriculture and water supplies, while Latin America could see increased rainfall, according to the WMO.
The WMO and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordination, Tom Fletcher, called for urgent anticipatory action.
"We need to get serious. This El Niño is the behemoth, it is a wrecking ball. It will tear through Latin America, Eastern and Southern Africa, Asia and the Pacific with extreme heat, droughts and flood," Fletcher said, warning of massive humanitarian consequences. 50 million people could face increased hunger, he said.