NOAA and Federal Climate Science

NOAA now estimates a 50–60% chance that El Niño will develop between July and September 2026, a shift in the Pacific climate pattern that historically drives hotter global temperatures, wetter winters across much of the southern United States and drier conditions in parts of the West and Midwest. The agency has also adopted a new Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI), which compares east‑central Pacific temperatures to the rest of the tropics instead of an outdated 30‑year baseline, in an effort to track El Niño and La Niña more accurately as oceans warm. Scientists note that the strong 2023–24 El Niño helped push 2024 to the warmest year on record and warn that, because the atmosphere responds with a lag, a new El Niño starting late this year would likely drive its biggest global effects in 2027, although 2026 could still set a heat record even without it given the underlying warming trend. The article also reports that the recent La Niña episode that began in December 2024 has been relatively weak and is expected to give way to neutral conditions by spring, yet did not prevent 2025 from becoming the third‑hottest year on record. For U.S. readers, these shifts matter for advance planning around drought and flood risk, wildfire seasons, crop yields and energy demand as the country contends with repeated record‑breaking heat years.