Britain and China don’t agree on too many things. Both agree, however, that the 2026-27 El Niño weather event is likely to be the most powerful ever.
“We should be clear that this is an unprecedented event… I have never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts,” warned the head of long-range forecasting at the UK Met Office, as quoted by the BBC.
A month later, the Global Times reported that “China’s National Climate Center (NCC) has forecast that the ongoing El Niño event is likely to become the strongest on record.”
That said, we in Cyprus aren’t panicking just yet – though we do expect a much wetter start to the winter.
“El Niño directly affects all regions adjacent to the region in question,” Dr Filippos Tymvios, director of the Department of Meteorology, said in an emailed response to the Cyprus Mail.
Global effect of El Niño
“Because the magnitude of this event is so large, however, it also indirectly affects the weather across the whole planet.”
The ‘region in question’ is the Pacific, where trade winds push warm surface waters from the east Pacific (off South America) to the west (off Australia).
If the winds are gentler than usual, the flow of warmer water decreases, so the west becomes cooler and the east becomes warmer – which, since warmer air holds more moisture, means more rain in the east. This is El Niño.
The reverse occurs when the trade winds are stronger than usual, making the western Pacific (even) warmer and wetter. This is La Niña. Both phenomena last about one year and occur every two to seven years, according to Wikipedia – and, as Tymvios notes, indirectly affect global temperatures, not just the Pacific.
This El Niño is special
Two things make this year’s ongoing El Niño special. The first is its magnitude. From October to December, the anomaly in sea-surface temperature is forecast to reach about 3.7 degrees Celsius.
“This is the highest since observations began, and is stronger than the previous record of + 2.6 degrees Celsius in November 2015-January 2016,” according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The second important point, for us, is that this El Niño is going to be combined with a positive phase for the so-called Indian Ocean Dipole, which – to put it simply – is a similar oscillation to El Niño for the Indian Ocean.
“A study by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has linked this combination to more frequent ‘Cyprus Lows’ – as they’re known in the literature – and increased rainfall in parts of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East,” writes Tymvios, adding (like any good weatherman) that of course it’s merely “a statistical trend”, not a cast-iron guarantee of a rainy winter.
20-70 per cent more rainfall for Cyprus
Still, he adds: “Analysis of the IMS/ECMWF seasonal forecast maps for Cyprus indicates a generally wetter start to the period. For the October-December timeframe, it suggests approximately 20-70 per cent more rainfall, depending on the area, with the signal being strongest in October.”
This is slightly different to the rest of the world, where El Niño is expected to peak around December and persist through to February 2027, according to WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo.
In Cyprus, the high-water mark of the extra rainfall is probably now, this month and possibly the next. In fact, writes Tymvios, “for December-February, precipitation mostly appears around normal levels, and even a bit lower.”
So is this all much ado about nothing? Well, yes and no.
The effects of a ‘super’ El Niño shouldn’t be underestimated. The one in 1997-98 caused an estimated 16 per cent of the world’s reef systems to die.
We in Cyprus might be relatively sheltered, but this year’s super-event is sure to cause flooding, droughts, potential wildfires, and other disruptions to the global weather system – and of course that 20-70 per cent extra rainfall could end up causing problems here too.
The other worrying development was spelled out by the WMO’s Saulo, in a recent speech to the Global Heat Forum in Bangkok.
“El Niño doesn’t add new heat to the planet. It releases heat the ocean has already been storing beneath the surface,” she pointed out. That’s why – even though there’s no evidence that global warming leads to more frequent El Niños – it can make them more intense when they do happen.
More heat available
“The ocean it’s drawing from is the warmest we’ve ever measured it. There is simply more heat available to release,” she said.
It’s a vicious circle. A warmer ocean leads to a stronger El Niño – which, in turn, sends average temperatures soaring and leads, down the line, to a warmer ocean.
“Certainly, we’re concerned about the impact of El Niño on an already warming atmosphere – and we acknowledge that the temperature of the entire planet is likely to rise to record levels,” admits Tymvios, echoing the UK Met Office which (as per the BBC article) thinks it’s “very likely” that 2027 will be the hottest year on record globally.
In the short term, however – looking at it purely through local, not global eyes – Cyprus is tentatively calm about the big bad El Niño.