El Niño set to intensify next month, UN weather agency warns
El Niño is coming back stronger — and the world should brace for it. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a stark warning Friday that the powerful climate phenomenon will intensify beginning next month, compounding an already brutal stretch of extreme heat and erratic rainfall hitting nearly every region on the planet.
What the WMO is saying
The Geneva-based agency said there’s a 90 percent probability that El Niño conditions will persist through the end of the year, with peak intensity expected between November and January. That’s not a small window. Scientists at the WMO described the developing event as “significant” and warned that its effects will layer on top of the background warming already baked in by decades of greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are in uncharted territory,” said a WMO spokesperson. “This El Niño is developing against a backdrop of record-breaking temperatures, which means we can expect new extremes.”
What El Niño actually does
El Niño occurs when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean rise above normal levels, disrupting atmospheric circulation patterns around the globe. It doesn’t just bring heat. It reshuffles rainfall in ways that hit farming, water supplies, and infrastructure hard. Parts of South America and East Africa tend to get soaked. Australia, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa typically dry out. The 2015–2016 El Niño, one of the strongest on record, triggered widespread droughts, wildfires, and flooding that affected tens of millions of people.
This one could be in the same league.
Why the timing matters
The warning comes as 2023 is already shaping up to be one of the hottest years ever recorded. June was the warmest June in global records, with average sea surface temperatures hitting unprecedented highs. And the Atlantic hurricane season is still months from its most dangerous phase. El Niño typically suppresses Atlantic hurricane activity — so that’s one silver lining — but the Pacific is a different story, with conditions favoring more intense storms in that basin.
Health officials are also watching closely. El Niño events have historically been linked to spikes in mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue fever and malaria, particularly in tropical regions where weather shifts disrupt ecosystems and human behavior at the same time.
What comes next
The WMO is urging governments, particularly those in vulnerable regions, to activate disaster preparedness plans now rather than waiting for conditions to deteriorate. Early warning systems have improved dramatically since 2016, but the agency’s scientists say forecasting alone won’t save lives — action has to follow. Countries in the Horn of Africa and across South Asia are considered especially at risk given existing food insecurity and limited infrastructure resilience.
Still, there’s time to prepare. But not much of it. If El Niño intensifies on schedule, the window for meaningful intervention could close faster than policymakers are ready to act.
