WMO says El Niño could be 'literally off the monitoring charts'

As of 3:09 p.m. ET, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026

The current El Niño event could be unprecedented in strength, "literally off the monitoring charts that we have used for the past four decades," World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said Wednesday as the agency released a new seasonal climate outlook.

WMO's latest Global Seasonal Climate Update forecasts that sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific, the epicenter of El Niño, may rise to 3.8 degrees Celsius above average during November 2026 to January 2027, Saulo said at a press conference in Geneva with U.N. emergency relief chief Tom Fletcher.

"El Niño will peak towards the end of 2026 but its impacts will be felt long after that," Saulo said.

'Beyond that limit'

"Whenever we have an anomaly at this area in the Pacific above 0.5C, we declare El Niño. And we are expecting an anomaly of 3.8," Saulo said, according to a U.N. Geneva transcript of the press conference. "We have not seen in our records 3.8, we have seen around three in some record El Niño before with very substantive impacts across the world. So, we are beyond that limit, out of our records, out of our statistics of what we can expect."

A very strong El Niño can bring severe drought to some regions, heavy rainfall and flooding to others, and increased heat across large parts of the world, Saulo said. "We are already witnessing extreme weather events and expect these to multiply – and cascade – as El Niño intensifies."

She also stressed that "a powerful El Niño does not have to be a recipe for humanitarian disaster," adding: "We have the science, the forecasts and the early warning systems to save lives and protect livelihoods."

Region by region

WMO's outlook points to wetter-than-normal conditions in parts of East Africa during the October-December rainy season, increased risk of drier conditions in southern Africa from November, and warmer conditions and rainfall deficits in Southeast Asia, according to Saulo's statement. In the Americas, it points to increased rainfall in the northwest United States and southern parts of western South America, and increased drought risk in parts of Central America, the southern Caribbean and the Amazon.

"These are seasonal outlooks, not predictions of individual events," Saulo said.

A joint call for action

WMO and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued what Saulo called "a joint call for urgent and coordinated anticipatory action."

"This El Niño is a behemoth. It is a wrecking ball," Fletcher said, according to the U.N. Geneva transcript. "It will tear through, as you've heard, Latin America, eastern and southern Africa, Asia and the Pacific with extreme heat, droughts and floods; and that has massive humanitarian consequences: 50 million people could face increased hunger."

Fletcher said the African Development Bank estimates that it will cost African countries between $10 billion and $20 billion "and drive down GDP by between one and two per cent."

"I've released over $50 million from our Central Emergency Response Fund to help 11 countries on the front line including Chad, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan," Fletcher said.

The next two weeks will be critical, Fletcher said, according to UN News, adding that Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya urgently need funding and emergency supplies in place before heavy rains arrive.