A historical magnitude El Niño event is developing in the Pacific Ocean since the beginning of June this year, with the potential to cause extreme weather conditions in various global regions, such as floods and storms.
This scenario is partially attributed to the intensification of the phenomenon, as shown by a study published in the journal Science. The research indicates that El Niño events have become almost 40% more intense in the last 40 years compared to the pre-industrial period. The authors suggest that global warming is the probable factor behind this change.
According to the article, the El Niños recorded in the last four decades have surpassed the strength of any occurrence documented in the thousand years prior to 1850, the time when human activity began to influence the climate due to greenhouse gas emissions.
El Niño Intensification
El Niño constitutes a natural climatic phenomenon that has occurred for thousands of years. It manifests through modifications in oceanic and atmospheric circulation in the equatorial Pacific, resulting in a minimum increase of 0.5 °C in the average surface water temperature for several consecutive months.
The intensity of the phenomenon is directly linked to the increase in Pacific water temperature. When this rise exceeds 2 °C, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an American climate agency, classifies it as 'very strong', and it can be informally called a 'Super El Niño'.
In these cases, the probability of natural disasters increases, such as floods, wildfires, landslides, and severe storms.
In 2026, a 'Super El Niño' is forming. Julia Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan and co-author of the study, states that 'the question is not whether it will occur, but what its severity and the extent of the impacts will be.'
Historical Record
To find historical evidence of each El Niño episode, the team of researchers analyzed samples from 13 corals located in the Galapagos Islands. These samples, called 'witnesses', function as 'climate archives' or 'ocean black boxes', providing environmental records and terrestrial climate variations over centuries, as they are composed of progressively accumulating layers.
The analysis of the chemical composition of these coral layers allows for the recording of the sea water temperature where the corals developed. The result revealed a history of temperature fluctuations in Galapagos—the location chosen by Cole due to the greater impact of El Niño there. It was observed that intense El Niño events occurred in the last 40 to 50 years, while periods prior to this interval exhibited a 'rather consistent pattern of lower intensity El Niños.'
Cole concludes that these findings reinforce the urgency of reducing global warming. She expresses the belief that global warming is intensifying El Niño, which implies more severe climatic extremes, increasing ecological, human, and infrastructure losses. According to her, no country has sufficient resources to fully protect itself from these effects, which justifies the need to abandon fossil fuels, considered the origin of the problem.
