Full transcript
100% Probability
0:01Right now, something is happening in the Pacific Ocean that most people have no idea
0:07about. Thousands of metres below the surface, an enormous pulse of warm water is moving eastward
0:14along the equator — invisible from above, but carrying enough heat to reshape the weather of
0:21an entire planet. Scientists have a name for it. A Kelvin wave. And where it's heading, and what
0:28it's about to do when it arrives at the surface, is why climate forecasters are using language this
0:35summer that most of them have never used before. In March of this year, forecasters gave this a 22%
0:43chance of happening. A real possibility, but nothing alarming. Then April came,
0:49and that number jumped to 80%. And then, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
0:56Forecasts released its May update. The number that came back stopped people in their tracks.
1:03100%. A 100% probability of a super El Niño forming by November. And the projected peak
1:13temperature of the ocean at the centre of all this? Three degrees Celsius above average. A
1:20level of heat in the Pacific that hasn't been recorded since 1877. Almost 150 years ago.
1:29The forecasts are not just pointing in the same direction. They are converging,
1:35faster than the models can keep up with. And what they're converging on is something
1:40that will touch almost every region on Earth. Before we talk about what a super El Niño does,
El Niño, In a Nutshell
1:50it is important to understand what El Niño actually is — because most people have heard the
1:56name without fully understanding the mechanism. Under normal conditions in the tropical Pacific,
2:03trade winds blow from east to west, pushing warm surface water toward Asia and Australia
2:10and allowing cold, nutrient-rich water to rise up along the South American coast.
2:16That's the baseline state of the Pacific — warm water in the west, cooler water in the east. El
2:22Niño happens when those trade winds weaken. The warm water that was being pushed westward sloshes
2:29back toward the centre and east of the Pacific. Sea surface temperatures rise significantly in the
2:36central and eastern tropical Pacific. And because the ocean and atmosphere are constantly exchanging
2:42heat and moisture, that shift in ocean temperature doesn't stay in the Pacific. It reorganises
2:49weather patterns across the entire globe — changing where it rains, where it droughts, where
2:55it floods, where it burns, and ultimately pushing global average temperatures upward as the ocean
3:02releases stored heat back into the atmosphere. El Niño events happen naturally, roughly every two
3:10to seven years. A weak one barely registers outside the tropics. A moderate one shifts
3:17rainfall patterns across multiple continents. A strong one reshapes the weather for an
3:23entire year or more. And a super El Niño is in a different category entirely. At that threshold,
3:31the sheer volume of heat transferred from ocean to atmosphere is sufficient
3:36to physically displace the jet streams of both hemispheres, generating simultaneous droughts,
3:42floods, wildfires and heatwaves across countries thousands of kilometres from the Pacific.
Why 2026 Is Different
3:52There have been only four confirmed super El Niño events since reliable records began in
3:581950. Each one left a mark. The 1997 to 1998 event triggered catastrophic wildfires across Indonesia,
4:09devastating flooding in Peru and Ecuador, and widespread coral bleaching across the Pacific.
4:16The economic damage ran into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The 2015 to 2016 event
4:23pushed 2016 to become the hottest year ever recorded at that time. These were serious,
4:30consequential events that affected hundreds of millions of people across multiple continents.
4:36But here's the thing. Every one of those super El Niños happened on a cooler planet than the
4:43one we're living on right now. The Earth today is approximately
4:481.3 degrees Celsius warmer than it was before industrialisation. The last twelve months have
4:55been the warmest twelve-month period ever recorded in human history. The oceans — which absorb over
5:0290 percent of the excess heat that climate change traps — are warmer than they have ever been in the
5:07modern record. So when El Niño releases that stored ocean heat back into the atmosphere,
5:14as it always does, it isn't starting from the same place previous events started from. It's
5:21starting from a higher floor. Think of it like a fever on top of a fever. The body was already
5:28running hot. And now something is about to push it higher. That's what makes 2026 different.
5:35Not just the strength of the El Niño itself — but the world it's arriving into.
What It Means For You
5:45This is the part that actually matters for most people watching this. Because a super El Niño
5:51doesn't feel the same everywhere. Depending on where you live, it either brings too much water
5:57or not nearly enough. And understanding which side of that you're on is the key.
6:03Start with Asia. For India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and parts of Australia, a super
6:10El Niño typically means one thing — drought. The monsoon weakens. The rains that billions of
6:17people depend on for their crops and their water supply arrive late, or don't arrive at all. The
6:232015 to 2016 super El Niño contributed to one of India's worst agricultural droughts in decades.
6:32If 2026 matches or exceeds that intensity, the same regions face the same risk — except with
6:39larger populations and food systems already under stress from years of extreme weather.
6:45East Africa gets the opposite. Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia — these regions typically
6:51see above-average rainfall during El Niño, which sounds like good news until you see what that
6:58actually looks like on the ground. The 2023 to 2024 El Niño, which wasn't even a super event,
7:05caused devastating floods across the region that displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
7:11In South America, the Amazon basin faces drought and heat — dangerous in a rainforest
7:17that is already under enormous pressure from deforestation. Around 40 percent of the Amazon
7:23is already affected by some form of forest degradation. A strong El Niño on top of that
7:29raises wildfire risk to levels that could rival the catastrophic 2019 and 2023 fire seasons.
7:37Meanwhile, Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil tend to see the opposite — wetter conditions,
7:45above-average rainfall, increased flooding risk in low-lying areas.
7:50For North America, the effects depend heavily on where you are. The southern United States
7:55typically sees wetter, milder winters. The Pacific Northwest faces reduced snowpack and
8:01expanded wildfire seasons come summer. The Midwest generally gets a warmer than average winter — by
8:07around 3 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. And across Europe, the latest forecast is already
8:13showing above-normal temperatures expected across nearly the entire continent through
8:19the summer months, with the strongest signal over southern Europe and the Mediterranean.
The Hurricane Paradox
8:28Here's something that surprises most people when they first hear it. A super El Niño actually
8:33makes the Atlantic hurricane season quieter. Not safer everywhere, but quieter in the Atlantic.
8:40And understanding why reveals something genuinely interesting about how connected
8:45the world's weather systems really are. Connected — and almost never reported that
8:51way. And that's actually the deeper problem with how most of us read the news today. Each of us
8:57only sees a narrow slice of reality, shaped by the outlets we follow and the region we live in.
9:04The bias itself is one thing. The harder problem is that we almost never know what we're not being
9:10shown. That's why I use Ground News. It's a platform that cuts through bias
9:16and hype by showing you how different outlets are covering the same story — political slant,
9:22headline framing, and what stories your feed might be missing entirely.
9:27For example, when the news about El Niño broke, I used Ground News to ensure I was reading balanced,
9:35credible coverage. I could instantly see the bias distribution was nearly equal — and check
9:40each outlet’s factuality rating, verified by three independent organizations. And here's
9:46a cool detail — the founder is a former NASA engineer, so science coverage is
9:51taken seriously. My favourite feature is the Blindspot, which flags stories
9:57being disproportionately covered by one side. If you're only interested in topics like science,
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10:19to ground.news/sou. The link is also in the description. Now — back to the Atlantic.
10:28Why does that happen? Why does a heating Pacific calm down hurricanes thousands of miles away? It
10:35comes down to one thing. Wind shear.
10:38When the Pacific Ocean heats up dramatically, it changes the wind patterns high up in the
10:43atmosphere over the Atlantic and Caribbean. Those winds create what meteorologists call
10:49wind shear — essentially, powerful gusts at high altitude that tear developing hurricanes apart
10:56before they can grow into anything serious. Hurricanes need calm, consistent conditions
11:02to strengthen. Wind shear is their enemy. And a strong El Niño fills the Atlantic with it.
11:09NOAA and AccuWeather are already forecasting a below-average Atlantic hurricane season for
11:162026 because of this. For communities along the Gulf Coast and in the Caribbean that
11:22have lived through devastating seasons in recent years, that is genuinely good news.
11:28But here's the catch. The Pacific gets the opposite. El Niño warms the eastern Pacific,
11:35reduces wind shear there, and creates ideal conditions for storms to develop
11:40and strengthen off the coast of Mexico and Central America. AccuWeather is projecting 17
11:46to 22 named storms in the eastern Pacific this season, with up to eight potentially reaching
11:52major hurricane status. So while one ocean calms down, the other heats up. The Atlantic
11:59quietens. The Pacific intensifies. And whether that trade-off works in your favour depends
12:06entirely on which coastline you call home. Beyond the floods and droughts and hurricanes,
Breaching the Limit
12:13there's a bigger number that climate scientists are watching very carefully. The global average
12:19temperature. Because a super El Niño doesn't just disrupt regional weather — it pushes the
12:25thermometer up for the entire planet. And where that thermometer ends up over the
12:30next two years could be genuinely historic. The pattern is reliable and well understood.
12:38El Niño releases heat that the ocean has been storing for years back into the atmosphere. That
12:44process consistently pushes global temperatures upward. But the only difference is the starting
12:50point or the baseline. The planet is already warmer than it's ever been in the modern record.
12:57So when El Niño adds its heat on top of that, the numbers go somewhere new.
13:02Carbon Brief currently projects 2026 to be the second warmest year on record. But if the
13:093-degree ocean anomaly the models are projecting fully materialises, scientists are warning that
13:152027 — when the full atmospheric impact of peak ocean temperatures typically arrives,
13:22with a lag of several months — could break the global temperature record by a meaningful margin.
13:28James Hansen's team at Columbia University projects global temperatures could reach
13:331.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2027. That would briefly push
13:39us above the 1.5 degree threshold that the Paris Agreement was designed to prevent.
13:45One important thing to understand here. A single year above 1.5 degrees is not the
13:51same as permanently crossing that threshold — temperatures typically come back down when El
13:57Niño fades and La Niña conditions follow. But it does mean that in 2026 and 2027,
14:04more people in more places will experience what a warmer world actually feels like in their daily
14:10lives. Not as a statistic. As weather. So where does all of this leave us?
What Next?
14:17Every major institution agrees that El Niño is coming, that it's heading toward strong
14:22or super strength, and that it's arriving on the warmest baseline in recorded history.
14:28What that means practically is straightforward. The regions most vulnerable to El Niño — South
14:34Asian farming communities, East African populations in flood-prone areas,
14:39Amazon ecosystems already under pressure, Pacific coastlines in the path of intensifying
14:46storms — have strong scientific reason to be preparing right now rather than waiting for
14:52certainty that may only arrive once the event is already underway. Seasonal forecasting
14:59exists precisely to create that window of preparation. And right now, that window is open.
15:07This isn't about fear. It's about information. The planet has been through super El Niños before and
15:14come out the other side. But the ones that caused the least damage were the ones where communities,
15:20governments and farmers knew what was coming and had time to act.
15:25The forecasts this week are giving us that time. The question is what we do with it.
15:31So, thanks for watching, and thanks to Ground News for sponsoring this video. If you're tired
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