El Niño to Bring Unpredictable Weather Anomalies in 2026

Climate experts warn that the combination of global warming's effects and a rare form of El Niño—unseen since the late 1990s—could trigger atmospheric patterns that science currently lacks sufficient observational data to model.

The current El Niño is the first in nearly 30 years to originate from anomalous warming in the eastern Pacific rather than the central Pacific, reports BELTA, citing the UZA news agency.

The first warning sign appeared during the 2023–2024 season, when—contrary to expectations—the southern U.S. states did not experience a wet season, nor did the northern states experience a dry one. A team from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) identified the cause: the slow warming of tropical waters in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans offset El Niño's impact on North America, disrupting a once-reliable pair of linked climate patterns—a teleconnection.

"We know far less about the teleconnections of the new atmosphere," Eran Voss, a climatologist at Bar-Ilan University (Israel), told the journal *Nature*.

He added that the distorted synergy between global warming and El Niño's behavior would not only hinder forecasting but also complicate preparations for the resulting impacts. Ecosystem researcher Sergio de Miguel of the University of Lleida (Spain) likened the events of 2023 to teleconnections acting as a complex "butterfly effect," where events at one point on the planet trigger a multitude of downstream effects thousands of kilometers away. NCAR senior scientist Clara Deser framed the issue this way: "Historical precedent can no longer serve as a reliable guide for ENSO teleconnections, as anthropogenic warming patterns intensify."

Other consequences of the 2023–2024 El Niño bear out her assessment: the drought in the Amazon was the most severe Brazil has experienced in 120 years.