The UN’s weather agency has warned that a rapidly intensifying El Niño will push temperatures above normal across much of the world over the coming months and heighten the risk of heatwaves, drought and flooding, a warning that lands as southern Europe, including the French Riviera, contends with wildfires and repeated bouts of extreme heat.
In its latest update, the World Meteorological Organization said El Niño, which arrived earlier this year, is expected to strengthen into a strong event between August and October, with sea-surface temperatures in the key Pacific monitoring regions forecast to run more than 2.9°C above average. Combined with exceptionally warm oceans worldwide and a developing pattern in the Indian Ocean, it is expected to bring above-normal temperatures almost everywhere and to reshape rainfall, heavier in some regions and sharply reduced in others, raising the danger of drought, floods and wildfires.
What El Niño means
El Niño is the warm phase of a natural climate cycle in the tropical Pacific, in which the ocean releases stored heat into the atmosphere, temporarily lifting global temperatures and disrupting weather patterns far beyond the Pacific. Its effects ripple through agriculture, water and energy supplies and food prices. The agency stressed that the phenomenon is unfolding against a backdrop of long-term, human-driven warming, which is making its impacts more severe.
Records within reach
The warning comes with 2026 already among the hottest years measured, its first six months ranking as the third-warmest start to any year on record. The last El Niño, in 2023 and 2024, was among the five strongest ever and helped drive the record global temperatures of 2024. Forecasters say there is a strong chance that a year within the current decade will surpass that record, and that the developing El Niño could briefly push the global average past 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the tougher limit set in the Paris climate agreement.
A planet ‘already on fire’
The report landed as wildfires burned across parts of Europe and Africa and as monsoon flooding caused havoc in South Asia. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, renewed his call for governments to stop developing new fossil fuels, with the UN describing an El Niño taking hold on “a planet already on fire”. For the Mediterranean and the Riviera, where a fresh heatwave has kept the region on alert this summer, the warning is a reminder that this year’s extremes sit within a longer, accelerating trend, one Monaco has long pressed the international community to confront through its work on climate and ocean protection.
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Photo credit: NASA, Unsplash