El Niño Odds Rise as Storm and Crop Threats Intensify Globally

The odds are rising that a weather-roiling El Niño will emerge in the next few months and strengthen through the year, threatening global crop supplies, altering storm patterns and pushing temperatures toward record highs.

There is an 82% chance El Niño will develop in the equatorial Pacific between May and July, and a 67% chance it will be either a strong or very strong event when it peaks between November to January, the US Climate Prediction Center said in a Thursday statement.

“El Niño could likely be declared in the next two months,” said Nathaniel Johnson, a meteorologist with the US Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and member of the El Niño forecast team. In addition to disrupting weather patterns globally, “it increases the chance that we will see a record-breaking global average temperature.”

El Niños occur when the equatorial Pacific ocean becomes warmer than normal and the atmosphere above it reacts, altering weather patterns around the world. The effects often first emerge in the tropics before spreading across Australia, Asia, the Americas and Africa as the phenomenon nears its peak in December.

The shifts can rattle energy and agriculture markets, worsen wildfire risks and trigger floods and droughts. A powerful El Niño in 1997, which some observers think this year’s event could rival, killed at least 30,000 people and caused an estimated $100 billion in damage globally. A 2023 study by Dartmouth College suggested El Niño’s damages from the last major event in 2016 totaled about $7.8 trillion.

While no two El Niños are identical, strong events in the past have reduced yields for palm oil, coffee, cocoa, cotton and grains such as wheat and rice, according to a report from Marex, one of the world’s largest future brokerages.

“Stocks are highly sensitive to weather-driven production shocks and seasonal output cycles,” Marex’s report said. “During El Niño, production declines, leading stocks to draw down rapidly.”

The earliest signs of El Niño’s power are likely to appear in the tropics, Johnson said. The phenomenon increases wind shear across the western Atlantic Ocean, which can disrupt the structure of hurricanes and tropical storms and sometimes shorten the six-month storm season.

Atlantic storms are closely watched because they can damage real estate from Canada to Central America, including New York City, and crimp oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico for both the US and Mexico. Florida, a major orange juice producer, is also vulnerable during the June 1 to Nov. 30 hurricane season.

While El Niño tends to suppress Atlantic storms, warmer Pacific waters can fuel more tropical systems there, raising risks for Mexico and parts of Asia. El Niño also has been linked to drier conditions across India during the June-to-August monsoon season.

Currently, a deep pool of warm water beneath the Pacific’s surface is helping convince scientists that El Niño is on the way, Johnson said. Forecasters are watching for westerly winds that could push the warm water to the surface, where it would interact more directly with the atmosphere.

“The next month or so is critical in that regard,” Johnson said.