Three years after El Niño delivered a stark preview of a hotter planet, the climate phenomenon is returning to warmer baseline conditions—and scientists warn that policy responses remain dangerously inadequate.
El Niño acts as a climate time machine, temporarily elevating global temperatures to levels that will become routine under continued warming. The 2023-2024 event drove temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, offering a glimpse of what crossing the Paris Agreement threshold means in practice: record heatwaves, devastating wildfires, coral bleaching, and disrupted agricultural patterns across the tropics.
But this time, El Niño arrives on a hotter baseline. Climate analysis shows that average global temperatures have continued rising since the last cycle, meaning the coming warming spike will push temperatures into uncharted territory—likely exceeding 1.6°C or even 1.7°C above pre-industrial levels during peak months.
The pattern is predictable: Peru and Ecuador face devastating floods while Indonesia and Australia confront severe drought and wildfire risk. East Africa expects heavy rains that could trigger cholera outbreaks, while Southern Africa braces for crop failures. The Amazon faces another year of severe drought that will increase tree mortality and carbon emissions from the world's largest rainforest.
What remains unpredictable is the policy response. Despite clear warnings from the last El Niño cycle, governments have not implemented the early warning systems, drought preparedness programs, or climate adaptation financing that could reduce impacts on vulnerable populations. Food security experts warn that the combination of El Niño and ongoing conflicts in Sudan and Yemen could trigger humanitarian crises.
In climate policy, as across environmental challenges, urgency must meet solutions—science demands action, but despair achieves nothing. El Niño's predictability offers a rare opportunity in climate science: we know this is coming, we know where impacts will hit hardest, and we have months to prepare.
The phenomenon also offers a political opportunity. El Niño makes climate change visceral and immediate rather than abstract and distant. Temperature records, crop failures, and extreme weather during El Niño years historically drive public concern and policy action—if political leaders choose to connect the dots between the climate pattern and the underlying warming trend.
Climate justice advocates emphasize that developed nations, which caused the majority of historical emissions, must provide emergency climate financing to help vulnerable countries prepare for and respond to El Niño impacts. Current adaptation funding remains a fraction of what's needed, with the promised $100 billion annually still not fully delivered.
The question facing policymakers is whether they will treat this El Niño as another isolated crisis to manage, or as confirmation that baseline warming has made these events more dangerous—requiring not just emergency response but accelerated emissions reductions and climate adaptation investments.
