No, not shown; El Niño is natural, warming adds

El Niño starts from natural interactions between ocean heat, winds and the atmosphere in the tropical Pacific. It is not caused by climate change. Scientists do not yet have a reliable attribution of this particular event's strength to human-caused warming. The evidence on a long-term change in El Niño strength is mixed: models suggest more frequent extreme events with warming, but the short observational record and model differences leave this uncertain. Climate change does clearly warm the background, which can make this El Niño's global temperature and weather impacts hotter than past events of the same size. The forecast figures come from NOAA and IRI as of September and October 2026, and they can change as the event develops.

• NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (10 Sept 2026) gave a greater than 90% chance of a very strong El Niño through winter 2026-27.
• NOAA gave a 75% chance of an event exceeding anything in its record since 1950 (RONI of +2.5°C or more) during Oct-Dec 2026.
• El Niño is a natural, irregular cycle in tropical Pacific temperatures that has occurred for centuries.
• Climate models project more frequent extreme El Niño events under strong warming, but the observed trend is uncertain and models disagree.
• Global warming raises the baseline temperature, so El Niño years now set heat records more easily.

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El Niño is part of a natural climate oscillation that shifts between warm (El Niño) and cool (La Niña) phases every two to seven years. It develops when prevailing trade winds in the equatorial Pacific weaken, allowing warm ocean water to build up across the central and eastern Pacific. This process is governed by internal planetary climate dynamics, not by human greenhouse gas emissions. While scientists continue to model whether long-term warming will make extreme El Niño events more frequent in the future, the occurrence and initial development of any single El Niño are naturally generated. The primary role of human-caused climate change is to elevate global baseline temperatures, compounding El Niño's impacts and increasing the likelihood of extreme heat waves, droughts, and intense precipitation.

• El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a natural cycle that has recurred for millennia.
• Major scientific bodies including the IPCC and WMO state that climate change does not create or trigger individual El Niño events.
• Individual El Niño events form through natural ocean-atmosphere interactions, such as the periodic weakening of equatorial Pacific trade winds.
• Climate change adds heat on top of the natural cycle, leading to record-setting global temperatures and more severe weather extremes during strong events.
• Research into whether global warming makes El Niño cycles more frequent or intense overall is ongoing, but individual events remain naturally driven.

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The question asks whether climate change is causing the strong El Niño expected for the coming winter. ENSO is an internal mode of the climate system: it arises from coupled ocean-atmosphere instabilities in the tropical Pacific and has cycled for millennia without human influence. Nothing in the current evidence supports saying that greenhouse warming triggered or is causing a given El Niño event, so the answer is no. What the evidence does support is a weaker, longer-term statement: some models and studies project a greater frequency of extreme El Niño events as the planet warms, and warming can worsen the rainfall, heat and coral-bleaching impacts of any El Niño once it occurs. That is a neighbouring claim — a shift in the odds or in consequences — and should not be confused with causation of a single winter's event. Seasonal forecasts for a specific winter also carry large uncertainty and can be revised, so any claim that a strong event is locked in for a particular year should be treated cautiously.

• El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a natural cycle of the tropical Pacific, recorded in ship logs and corals for centuries and present long before industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
• Individual El Niño events are triggered by ocean-atmosphere dynamics such as westerly wind bursts and thermocline shifts, not by the global mean temperature.
• Climate models project that extreme El Niño events (comparable to 1997–98 and 2015–16) may become more frequent under continued warming (Cai et al., 2014, 2018), but this is an active research area with substantial model spread.
• Event-attribution science has not established a method for attributing any single El Niño event to anthropogenic climate change; attribution studies focus mainly on heatwaves, heavy rainfall and similar extremes.
• Even a well-forecast strong El Niño can be amplified in its impacts by background warming — for example warmer oceans feeding heavier rainfall — but that is a change in severity, not the cause of the event.

The question asks whether climate change is causing the strong El Niño potential this winter. While climate change is not the direct cause of El Niño events—which are natural climate phenomena—there is strong evidence that global warming is increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme El Niño events. The 2026–2027 El Niño is expected to be the strongest on record, with record-high sea surface temperatures and global average temperatures linked to climate change. This means climate change is amplifying the effects of El Niño, even if it is not the root cause of the event itself. The answer is therefore 'partly,' as the evidence shows a clear link between climate change and the increased intensity of El Niño, but not its occurrence.

• The 2026–2027 El Niño is the strongest ever measured for its time of year, with a central Pacific temperature anomaly of 3–4°C, making it a 'Super El Niño.'
• Global average sea surface temperatures reached a record high of 21.1°C in June 2026, driven by both El Niño and underlying global warming.
• Climate change does not cause El Niño events, but it increases the likelihood of stronger and more extreme El Niño events.
• NOAA and the World Meteorological Organization predict a greater than 90% chance of a very strong El Niño during the 2026–2027 winter.
• Research shows that global warming amplifies El Niño's impacts, such as increased precipitation extremes and higher global temperatures.

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