3 min readBengaluruApr 10, 2026 04:19 PM IST
A ‘very strong’ El Niño is likely to develop along the Pacific Ocean during the latter half of this year and persist till the end of 2026, the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Thursday.
In its monthly ENSO bulletin issued on April 9, NOAA said that the prevailing ENSO neutral conditions, which developed in March, will fade away and transition to El Niño during June – August period.
The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a global ocean-atmospheric phenomenon that is based on the ocean surface temperature along the equatorial and central Pacific Ocean. ENSO has three phases : El Niño (warm), neutral and La Niña (cool) and the phase is based on the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, a temperature value measured of a specific region, known as the Niño 3.4, along the Pacific Ocean. El Niño is declared when this value is equal or over 0.5 degree Celsius and La Niña when it is equal or lower than 0.5 degree Celsius. These phases alternate once every two to seven years. El Niño affects global weather and is known to cause extreme heat, drought and below average rainfall.
This year, strong El Niño is predicted given multiple factors. And the early signs of El Niño were emerging over the past one month, when the sea surface temperatures rose positively across the central and east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean, NOAA said.
“The emergence of El Niño is likely because of the increasing subsurface temperature anomalies and recent westerly wind anomalies over the western Pacific Ocean. The possibility of a very strong El Niño (when Niño 3.4 > 2 degrees Celsius) will be largely depend on the continuation of westerly wind anomalies across the equatorial Pacific throughout the northern hemisphere summer months, which is not assured,”
El Niño and India
On April 8, Reserve Bank of India governor Sanjay Malhotra noted a possible risk posed by the likely emergence of El Niño to India’s inflation targets.
Since the predicted El Niño episode will coincide with the southwest monsoon, which is the chief rainy season when India receives over 70 per cent of its annual rainfall, there are concerns on the kharif output.
Story continues below this ad
Meteorologists continue to maintain that El Niño is not the only dominant factor that regulates the summer monsoon but it is not something to be downplayed. For instance, the phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (the ENSO counterpart in the Indian Ocean) could play a decisive role this year in regulating the monsoons. In the past, a positive phase of the IOD had balanced the El Niño and had yielded normal seasonal rainfall over the country. Some of these were realised in 1972, 1982, 1997, 2015 and 2023.
Moreover, if a strong El Niño is truly realised, its full-blown effect could linger on and continue into 2027 as this phenomenon can have a life of up to two years.
