Every few years, the tropical Pacific Ocean shifts between two opposite states. In the warm phase, known as El Niño, a large patch of ocean surface becomes unusually warm. In the cool phase, La Niña, that same region turns unusually cold.
Based on June 2026 seasonal climate forecasts, contributing to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an El Niño occurrence this year is virtually certain.
Looking at the potential evolution in the coming months, it has a very high likelihood of being very strong and even turning into an unprecedented event.
Given such forecasts, a new JRC report explores the plausible scenarios of El Niño evolution, together with its effects on the global climate, food prices, exposed people, displacement, and humanitarian risks.
What would happen in different scenarios?
The report highlights that for this year’s El Niño, across several possible intensity scenarios, climate impacts will be felt across 2026-27 in many regions of the world and may persist even after the event itself has peaked.
Across all scenarios, extreme heat will build across the tropics and subtropics from September. It will peak between December 2026 and February 2027 and persist into spring 2027.
Unusually warm weather is expected to spread across much of the world, with the warmth growing stronger as El Niño intensifies. The regions most likely to feel this are in North and South America, Central America, Africa, the Euro-Asian continent and Australia.
In Europe, this El Niño could be strong enough to flip the pattern: instead of colder-than-normal autumn temperatures that typically accompany it, Europe may experience warmer-than-normal conditions, with that warmth building towards spring 2027.
El Niño is also expected to increase drought risk in large regions of Australia, South-East Asia, southern Africa, and Central America. Similar risk is expected in the Sahel and in the Indian subcontinent as El Niño intensifies.
Conversely, East Africa, parts of Central and East Asia, large areas in both South and North America will get more rainfall. However, excess water does not necessarily benefit agriculture: where soils are degraded or already saturated, heavy rainfall can increase erosion, nutrient loss, and waterlogging.
The humanitarian consequences
As the impacts of the El Niño will amplify and aggravate existing vulnerabilities, crises, and conflicts, to assess whether it could lead to humanitarian crises, the report uses INFORM Warning. This is a new tool combining hazard forecasts with data on conflict, food insecurity, displacement, and economic conditions to generate country-level risk scores.
For many countries in Central Africa INFORM Warning points to high humanitarian risks over the next six months. These countries are already experiencing active conflict, mass displacement, and severe food insecurity, and El Niño will make things worse. Together with Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Chad, these countries hold the highest warning levels globally, according to INFORM Warning.
Ecuador, Venezuela, and Haiti are the three cases where dry conditions will compound with pre-existing crises severe enough to expect humanitarian deterioration.
Food security under pressure
El Niño reshapes agricultural conditions across the globe. Impacts on crop productivity are expected in large parts of the world, e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, Australia, Brazil. The 2026-27 event is expected to push global food prices in different directions depending on where a crop is grown and how intense the event will become.
Durum wheat is a concern as global prices are predicted to rise sharply as the event intensifies. Global prices of maize may also slightly increase, although the response to a stronger El Niño is uncertain.
Global soybean and Hard Red winter wheat prices, by contrast, are expected to decline across all El Niño scenarios. Rice shows a more complex pattern, with a slight early decline followed by a price increase later.
The report cautions that, for the most extreme scenario, its models are extrapolating beyond any historical precedent.
The scale of drought displacement remains largely invisible
Predicting the effects of El Niño on displacement remains challenging as past events had different responses according to the prevalent regional hazards.
Data on displacement related to events such as drought are limited, similarly to information on people that are forced to stay and not move, representing one of the most invisible risks the 2026 event could generate.
According to the report, the 2026-27 El Niño will layer on existing displacement, conflicts, and food insecurity, raising the risk of re-displacement among already vulnerable populations, for example in East Africa, Central Africa, the Central American Dry Corridor, and parts of South and South-East Asia.
Why is this important?
El Niño is one of the world’s most predictable climate phenomena, providing governments and humanitarian organisations with a valuable window to prepare. Early warnings can help pre-position resources and release anticipatory funding.
Scientific basis
To assess the effects and the impacts of different El Niño intensity-based categories, including the unprecedented one, and to look at the most likely temporal evolution of the 2026-27 event, the report uses two complementary approaches. The first is based on a millennium-long earth-system simulation run under pre-industrial conditions.
The second approach draws on seasonal forecasting systems contributing to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The analysis draws on data and tools developed and/or processed by the JRC and scientific partners. Drought conditions are monitored through the European and Global Drought Observatories, while flood risk is tracked through the Global Flood Awareness System and population exposure is estimated using the Global Human Settlement Layer, all four part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. Agricultural impacts are assessed using the JRC’s Anomaly Hotspots of Agricultural Production system. Humanitarian risk is mapped through INFORM Warning, the newest tool of the INFORM suite. Together these systems provide an integrated multi-hazard view that underpin this report and can support anticipatory action.
OceanEye
OceanEye is the European Union’s initiative to strengthen ocean observation, ocean intelligence and Europe’s contribution to a sustained, fit-for-purpose global ocean observing system. It aims to better integrate observing infrastructures, data services and digital capabilities, while mobilising long-term investments in ocean observation and forecasting.
Its International Alliance for the Global Ocean Observing System seeks to maintain and strengthen the global networks that monitor the ocean. This is essential for tracking the ocean conditions that drive El Niño and other large-scale climate patterns, enabling earlier warnings and more reliable predictions of their impacts on weather, food security, water resources and ecosystems around the world.
O artigo foi publicado originalmente em JRC.
