The ENSO Outlook helps people turn climate information into anticipatory action
As the 2026 El Niño develops, the newly launched ENSO Outlook links climate data to floods, droughts and water risks, enabling early action and disaster mitigation.
- IWMI
- Sustainable Agriculture
- Sustainable Farming
The ENSO Outlook helps people turn climate information into anticipatory action
As the 2026 El Niño develops, the newly launched ENSO Outlook links climate data to floods, droughts and water risks, enabling early action and disaster mitigation.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is the planet’s most powerful natural climate driver: a recurring two-to-seven-year cycle in which sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern tropical Pacific swing between the warm El Niño and cool La Niña phases, reshaping rainfall and storm patterns worldwide.
That cycle has now tipped decisively toward its warm extreme. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center confirmed in June 2026 that El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen. The stakes are high because, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long noted, El Niño years tend to disrupt monsoon rains, intensify droughts in Southeast Asia and southern Africa, fuel flooding across parts of the Americas, and — layered atop a warming baseline from human-driven climate change — push global average temperatures toward new highs.