Something is shifting in the Pacific
Ocean.
It's not a storm or a current you can
see from the surface, but a slow,
powerful build-up of heat spanning
thousands of kilometers. And it's been
playing a dangerous game of hide and
seek. Now, out there for all to witness,
the Pacific Ocean is undergoing a
violent flip.
The latest information suggests we are
on the precipice of a super El Niño,
possibly the strongest El Niño event in
140
years.
A very rare high-intensity episode that
will propel global temperatures into
uncharted territory.
This isn't a seasonal shift, it's a
global reorganization of energy.
According to the latest data, there is
now a 98% chance of El Niño emerging by
August. And by September 2026,
the rise of a full-blown super El Niño
is now almost inevitable.
This kind of El Niño would see
intensified heat waves, floods,
droughts, and shifts in monsoon and
hurricane patterns all around the world.
Indeed, could a 2026 super El Niño push
our climate past the point of no return?
I'm James Shaw and you're watching
Astrum Earth.
Join me today as we look at the
mechanics of this climate engine. We'll
discuss why 2026 is becoming the perfect
storm for a record-breaking event. And
we'll look at what a planet already
pushed to the brink by climate change
does when its largest natural cooling
mechanism is replaced by a furnace.
I didn't expect to making this video
quite as quickly as I am, to be honest
with you. Let me take you back a few
months to a video I made about the weak
La Niña we had in 2025 that went into
2026. And in fact, it was so weak, we
suggested in that video that a Pacific
flip was possible. A kind of climate
whiplash, where after months of La
Niña's cold [music] pattern, the Pacific
would be primed to swing hot and bring
on a sort of monster of an El Niño.
Now, when I made that video, the chances
of that actually happening were quite
low, and we didn't know how hot things
might get if indeed they would at all.
But, as it turns out, that prediction
was bang on, and it's coming true
unfortunately right in front of our
eyes. And things are escalating pretty
quickly. So, here's a quick recap if you
missed that video. The El Niño Southern
Oscillation, or ENSO, is a term used to
describe a cycle of variations in the
Pacific Ocean's surface temperatures and
air pressure near the equator. Normally,
trade winds drive warm surface water
from near South America, the Eastern
Pacific, towards Asia. As that warm
water moves away from South America,
cold water rises to replace it in a
process called upwelling. This situation
is called ENSO neutral.
>> [music]
>> Now, if those trade winds are weaker
than usual, this upwelling effect
lessens, resulting in a warmer patch in
the Eastern Pacific Ocean. If those sea
surface temperatures rise by more than
half a degree Celsius above average,
then that is an El Niño. Conversely,
when trade winds are stronger, ocean
temperatures dip below average, and we
see a La Niña develop, where those
temperatures are more than half a degree
Celsius lower than average. This cycle
lasts between 9 and 12 months and
repeats every two to seven years. And at
the time of recording, we're in an ENSO
neutral state, at least according to
NOAA. But, not for much longer.
During an El Niño, Eastern Pacific sea
surface temperatures usually do reach
around 1 to 3 degrees Celsius above
normal, shifting tropical convection
currents and jet streams. This typically
brings wetter winters to California and
some regions in South America and dry
conditions to Australia, Indonesia, and
Southern Africa.
In fact, one strange quirk of El Niño is
that it tends to suppress Atlantic
hurricanes. What it does is increase
upper-level winds across the tropical
Atlantic. That then creates wind shear
that pulls apart tropical storm systems
before they can develop into the
hurricanes.
But unfortunately, it's bad news
elsewhere because it enhances the
potential for Pacific storms. That's due
to an increase in energy in the ocean
because warm surface water fuels the
development of tropical storms, which
turn into cyclones.
It also generally raises global
temperatures by 0.1 to 0.2°C above
trend, often producing the warmest years
on record if they coincide with ongoing
warming. Now, I should point out at this
point that this is not a new concept,
nor is having an El Niño a product of
climate change. It's a natural part of
our planet, a heartbeat that's been
thumping for at least 10,000 years. I
mean, we have evidence of ENSO's
chemical fingerprints in ancient coral
fossils and sediment cores stretching
back long before the first steam engine
was even built. But this year feels
different. Something sinister is brewing
out there, and it's starting to look
very much like we're heading for a super
El Niño.
Now, it's some housekeeping here on what
actually constitutes a super El Niño
because I'll be honest with you, if you
ask a scientist, that term well, doesn't
actually exist, but it does make for a
good media headline and title on this
thumbnail.
NOAA, who are the people right on the
forefront of this stuff, monitor El Niño
with a measure called the Oceanic Niño
Index or ONI. It's basically a 3-month
running mean of sea surface temperature
relative to a 30-year base. So, El Niño
is declared, as we said, when that ONI
goes above 0.5°C
for five or more overlapping seasons.
And just to make things a bit more
complicated, NOAA recently changed to a
new kind of measuring index called the
relative ONI index to account for
increased background warming, which it
didn't previously.
So, within this new way of measuring how
strong an El Niño actually is, they
class a weak one as between 0.5 and 1°
C,
a moderate one would be between 1 and
1.5° C,
and a strong El Niño is 1.5 to 2° C.
So, therefore, with a bit of creative
license, a super El Niño would be
somewhere 2° C
above average or more. And despite not
having a proper term for it, that has
happened before.
In fact, it's happened four times since
NOAA started these measurements in 1982,
[music]
1991, 1997, and most recently in 2015.
In every single case, each relative ONI
rating was more than 2° C.
And in November 2015, the index was a
whopping 2.4°
C.
That's That's more than strong. I mean,
that rating was looking for a phone
booth to take off its glasses and don a
superhero cape with.
In all seriousness, though, these giant
events have globe-spanning consequences.
The 2015 El Niño coincided with severe
drought in Ethiopia, water shortages in
Puerto Rico, and extraordinary Central
Pacific hurricane season, all combining
to produce record global warmth. More
than 60 million people were affected
with extreme food insecurity primarily
across Africa, Central America, and the
Pacific. It triggered the most
devastating global coral bleaching event
in history. And the impacts weren't just
felt environmentally. $3.9 trillion was
wiped from the global economy in the
following 3 years due to the lost
agricultural productivity and
infrastructure damages.
description as we head back to super El Nino.
So, is history about to repeat itself
again?
As of early 2026 the tropical Pacific
returned to an ENSO neutral state after
that weak El Nino we spoke about, but
don't be fooled because that's just on
the surface. It's what's brewing below
that's starting to ring alarm bells.
NOAA reports that ocean subsurface heat
content has been climbing for months and
is now well above normal. In March to
April 2026,
meteorologists observed bursts of
westerly winds driving warm water
eastward, a classic precursor to El
Niño. Now, usually Pacific trade winds
are easterly, holding warm water in the
west, but those winds are faltering. As
they weaken, a series of Kelvin waves,
massive pulses of warm water, are
traveling thousands of miles across the
ocean. And when they hit the South
American coast, they sort of uncork the
heat, and suddenly you've got all this
energy just sat there waiting to be
unleashed. In fact, NASA have just
caught one of these Kelvin waves in
action with the Sentinel-6 Michael
Freilich satellite. You can clearly see
it cross the Pacific Ocean and hit the
South American coast. But, here's the
catch. Because on top of the natural
cycle happening, this time we're
layering a natural surge onto a planet
that's already spent 12 consecutive
months above the 1.5° warming threshold.
2024 was the hottest year on record, and
it occurred during [music] an ENSO
neutral year. There was no extra heating
boost from El Niño. So, before we even
add in a naturally occurring event that
increases temperatures,
we're already working with a much higher
baseline, and that's a problem.
It's a bit like a loaded spring. That
heat hasn't fully reached the surface
yet, but when it does, it can rapidly
trigger El Niño conditions. The scary
thing is that exact same pattern showed
up before the 1997 and 2015 super El
Niños, too.
So, the big question is then, how big is
this one going to be?
Well, for starters, NOAA's Climate
Prediction Center has placed the odds of
El Niño emerging by July at 82%
with a 37% chance of a very strong El
Niño by winter 2026.
The UK and European estimates are how do
I put this? A little more aggressive.
Met Office data here in the UK shows 2°
C anomalies by September 2026.
And the ECMWF, the European Centre for
Medium-Range Weather Forecast, shows
there is a chance of temperature
anomalies exceeding 3° before October,
taking us well into super territory.
Indeed, on the other side of the scale
to NOAA, according to the ECMWF,
the odds of a super El Nino by July have
already climbed beyond 50%.
And as we approach winter, its emergence
appears inevitable.
Just a quick word of caution here when
it comes to data and modeling. I know
you know this, but I just have to sort
of say it. Forecasters do note that
models tend to overshoot El Nino
strength in the spring, and the outcome
actually depends on whether those
westerly winds continue what they're
doing. But because they're doing it
right now, that's that's where these
numbers come from. However you choose to
interpret those numbers is up to you,
but what I think we can deduce for
certain is that the environment is
primed for a strong event.
So, if we do end up with the fabled
super El Nino, well, what does that mean
for us?
The short answer is amplified extremes.
All the usual El Nino effects would be
supercharged. It'd be like driving
around in your car playing your music
with your bass turned up to maximum, you
know?
The first and perhaps most obvious thing
we've already touched on, there would be
a record-breaking global heat spike.
Each El Nino year brings hotter
conditions globally, and even without
the help of all the extra greenhouse gas
emissions, we'd usually expect somewhere
in the region of 0.1 to 0.2° worth of
increase. But for a super El Nino, well,
that could put temperatures in 2026-2027
to unprecedented heights, the hottest
years on record, exceeding 1.7, even
1.8° above pre-industrial levels. In the
most extreme scenarios, sea surface
temperature anomalies in the Pacific
region approach a stark 3.8°
C
by the year end. And when you consider
that the IPCC wanted to limit warming to
just 1.5°, you start to see just how
extreme this really is. And it's not
just the temperatures we should be
worrying about, either.
There will be a series of extreme
precipitation patterns in every corner
of the planet. A super El Niño would
bring torrential rains to the coast of
Peru and Ecuador, but inland, the Amazon
rainforest would face a thermal stress
test. By combining intense drought with
record-breaking temperatures, trees
would be pushed beyond their tolerance
limits.
Previous super El Niños have seen the
Amazon switch from a carbon sink to a
carbon source as drought kills off
massive swaths of the canopy.
In 2026, with the baseline temperature
already higher, the risk of megafires in
the world's lungs would be at an
all-time high.
In North America, the jet stream is
expected to split, so the US Southwest
and California would get a sort of
Godzilla winter with heavy snowpack and
torrential rains. Now, this may help
relieve reservoirs in the short term,
but it brings the immediate threat of
atmospheric rivers, long plumes of water
vapor coming in from the tropics. These
events can trigger catastrophic
landslides and cause localized flooding.
Meanwhile, the Pacific Northwest would
experience unusually hot and dry
conditions. On the other side of the
world in Australia, the news is also
sobering. The Bureau of Meteorology has
already issued a below-average rainfall
forecast for the eastern and
southwestern parts of the country, and
it's not just the lack of rain. Farmers
in New South Wales are facing a perfect
storm. They're still recovering from the
massive floods of previous years, but
now they could be hit by a triad of
pressures, intensifying drought, extreme
bushfire risk, and a global spike in
fertilizer and fuel costs all thrown
into one.
As we touched on earlier as well, El
Niño does something strange to
traditional hurricane patterns. [music]
Generally, it tends to tilt the odds of
Pacific cyclones and reduce the number
of Atlantic hurricanes. In 2015, for
example, during the strongest El Niño
we've ever seen so far, the central
Pacific had an unusually active cyclone
season. In total, there were 16,
including three simultaneous category
four storms. It was crazy.
So, a 2026 super El Niño would likely
mean, yeah, a quieter Atlantic season,
which is good news [music] for the US
East Coast, but terrible news for
Eastern Pacific cyclones that affect
Mexico, Hawaii, and beyond. And you
guessed it, there's more.
Historically, El Niños have caused fish
declines and even penguin die-offs in
the Galapagos due to changes in ocean
currents. A super El Niño would only
magnify these biological stresses. And
all of that before we've even gotten to
the thing that keeps us alive, food.
I mean, even now, climate analysts are
already warning that a strong El Niño
could significantly strain food
supplies. The India Meteorological
Department has pegged the 2026 monsoon
at just 92%
of its long period average, the lowest
in nearly 30 years. And that is a direct
threat to the kharif crops, the staples,
things like rice, cotton, and soybeans
that literally feed billions of people.
If the rains fail in August and
September, we aren't just looking at dry
fields, we're looking at food inflation
that could exceed 4.5%
destabilizing the rural economy for the
entire subcontinent.
And there's another twist in this, too.
The Energy and Climate intelligence unit
just released an article noting that an
El Nino driven weather shock on top of
war related fertilizer and fuel
disruptions could drive up both prices
and inflation. In short harvest in those
key farming regions so rice in Asia,
coffee in Africa, maize in Latin America
would majorly suffer amplifying hunger
and economic stress not just locally but
across the entire planet.
Analysis by the United Nations World
Food Program warned that the number of
food insecure people across the globe
could reach levels last seen at the
start of the Russian Ukraine invasion in
2022
impacting up to 318
million people across the globe who are
already food insecure.
Ooh, yeah, it's a lot, isn't it? Uh
sorry for that tirade of information. If
you are looking for a scrap of good
news, well as good as can be, um come to
Europe.
Over here where I am in the UK and into
mainland Europe, El Nino's influence is
more indirect. Some studies suggest El
Nino's winters tend to be milder and
wetter in northern Europe but the signal
is pretty weak and the summer impacts
are even less predictable. If you look
back at some of the developing El Nino
years in 1997 and 2015 and even 2023,
they all featured at least some hot
spells but no simple pattern or
something that unified them in any way.
But of course, thanks to our good old
friend global warming, any El Nino
effects might actually be quite hard to
disentangle from the ongoing trend of
record some heat in Europe anyway, so
either way.
And all of that stuff we've just talked
about doesn't just have a human cost.
There is also quite a large financial
one. In 2023 researchers from Dartmouth
University estimated the average El Nino
saps about 3.4 trillion dollars from the
global economy. That's because of
destroying crops, preventing the flow of
goods and services, all that kind of
stuff. Now that's just the estimate for
an average El Nino. So a super El Nino
will be far more devastating.
None of that makes for great reading at
all, does it really? Um there's nothing
remotely super about any of this for us
at all. Um which does sort of beg the
question, why is this happening in the
first place? Well, you might assume it's
because of global warming, which is sort
of what I think as well. But, bear with
me here because this sounds like a bit
of a cop-out, but scientists are
actually continuing to study how global
warming affects the El Nino Southern
Oscillation cycle. And the truth, they
say, isn't clear-cut. Look, as I've
alluded to in this video, El Nino isn't
new, nor is it particularly special. It
used to be like that uncle you saw at
family events every couple of years who
sort of said something weird and then
you never saw him again till the next
event. But, this time something is
clearly different. The UN's warned that
Earth's climate is further out of
balance right now than at any other time
in recorded history. So, how can both
things be true? I mean, based on that,
good old Uncle Enzo would have rocked up
to the party at some point anyway,
right? Well, yeah, but today's ocean is
warmer than decades past. The WMO notes
that 2015 to 2025 ocean temperatures
were the hottest 11-year span on record,
with Earth gaining heat faster than
ever.
More than 90% of the Earth's extra
energy also heats the oceans. And
according to the WMO, the heat stored in
the upper 2 km of global oceans reached
a new high in 2025.
Over the last two decades, it's been
warming more than twice as quickly as it
was during the late 20th century.
Add into that a series of late winter
westerly wind bursts that have injected
heat eastwards, pumping up the tropical
Pacific's heat content even more, and
the stage is set for a potentially very
strong or even super event.
If, or indeed when that happens, it will
escalate into a super El Nino, the likes
of which we've only seen a few times in
history. And that will supercharge
global warming and extremes around the
planet.
NOAA's climate prediction center updates
their ENSO predictions once a month. So,
maybe by the time you're watching this,
we'll have more information. We may even
be in the midst of a super El Nino. But,
what we do know is that super El Ninos
have happened before and they will
likely happen again. And whatever
happens, it's going to be a wild odd
ride watching this one play out.
planet after this video, click the link
in the video description.