NOAA's super El Niño proves fossil fuels are cooking the planet
By Sophie Naimi · Reporting from Paris ·
As a record-breaking El Niño discharges massive ocean heat, fossil fuel interests are weaponizing the temporary spike to mask the permanent trajectory of climate breakdown.
The fossil fuel industry and its army of delay merchants are wrong to treat the current "Super El Niño" as a mere natural cycle. They want us to see a weather anomaly. They want us to ignore the physics. But this event is not a random roll of the dice. It is the result of a planet being cooked by carbon emissions. By overcharging the ocean's heat reserves, the polluters have turned a recurring climate pattern into a global weapon.
An overcharged battery of heat
The Pacific Ocean is not just warming; it is discharging. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist, describes El Niño as "the ocean system discharging a full battery" of heat stored in the tropical oceans. The problem is that global warming is making that battery larger and faster to refill.
The numbers are staggering. According to Newsweek, the current event reached a single-day ocean-temperature peak of 3.05 degrees Celsius above average. This is a new record for the highest ocean anomaly. NOAA forecasters categorize this year's event as "very strong."
This is not a baseline we recognize. The 2015-16 El Niño serves as a baseline for these record-shattering anomalies. We are seeing a trend of "super-charged" weather patterns, much like the 2023-24 El Niño demonstrated. As Richard Allan, a professor at the University of Reading, notes, deluges and flooding are being "super-charged by the warmer world we live in, driven by our greenhouse gas emissions."
The hunger of the Global South
While the North worries about travel delays, the Global South faces an existential crisis. This is where the gap between corporate pledges and physical reality becomes a matter of life and death.
NPR reports that the United Nations World Food Programme estimates El Niño could push at least 49 million more people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027. This is a recurring pattern of climate shocks. We saw this during the 2015-16 El Niño, which pushed millions into hunger across the Global South.
The physics are simple. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor. This juices up storms and dries out crops. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that "the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up." The cost of this warming is never shared equally. The poorest places get the worst weather and the least help.
The California flood and the long record
In the United States, the risks are concentrated and catastrophic. Inside Climate News reports that California has seen 8 to 12 inches of sea level rise over the past century. Daniel Swain predicts this El Niño will add another foot of sea level rise by December.
This creates a deadly stack of water. We are seeing the 1997-1998 El Niño repeat itself, but with a higher baseline. The 1997-1998 El Niño is a historical benchmark of extreme climatic disruption that now serves as a warning for how fossil-fuel-driven warming supercharges natural cycles into unprecedented disasters. Back then, mudslides closed Highways 1 and 101 in southern California.
Today, the water is deeper. The vulnerability is higher. High-risk areas include the San Francisco Bay and offices of Google and Facebook. Some argue that a wet year will fix the water crisis. But as the 2017-2019 California drought showed, "three dry decades" of systemic deficit cannot be solved by one storm.
The verdict on the delay merchants
We are heading toward a collision with physics. Global temperatures next year may reach or exceed the 1.7 degree centigrade range. The fossil fuel majors will try to weaponize this. They will claim the 2027 heat spike was "just El Niño" to stall emissions regulations.
This is the ultimate greenwash. They will use a temporary discharge of heat to hide a permanent trajectory of collapse. But the 3.05 degrees Celsius anomaly is a scream from the ocean that cannot be silenced by a press release. We must follow the money to the companies that profit from this delay.
The 2026 super El Niño is the proof that we are out of time for incrementalism. If we continue to let the "battery" refill with carbon, the next discharge will not just break records. It will break the systems that sustain human life.