Super El Nino 2026: Turning climate forecasts into early action

Editor's note: As COP31 approaches in Antalya, Türkiye, the 2026 super El Nino is raising further concerns over global climate risks. Understanding its potential impacts and improving early warning and disaster prevention are key to strengthening climate resilience. CGTN invites Jiang Chao, an associate professor at Beijing Forestry University's College of Ecology and Nature Conservation, to explore the climate impacts of the super El Niño, the uncertainties of climate prediction, and ways to translate scientific forecasts into proactive disaster prevention. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

On November 9, 2026, the 31st Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP31) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will open in Antalya, Türkiye. Meanwhile, anomalous warming across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific continues.

The latest monitoring from China's National Climate Center indicates that a super Eastern-Pacific El Nino event officially formed in September 2026 and by October had developed into the strongest El Nino event on record, with its peak expected in late autumn or early winter.

With its maximum warming center located in the eastern equatorial Pacific, an Eastern-Pacific El Nino induces more pronounced atmospheric teleconnection effects and typically exerts stronger impacts on the global climate.

Against the backdrop of global warming, the warming effect of strong El Nino events tends to substantially elevate the global mean surface temperature.

Data on global surface temperature from the China Meteorological Administration show that global mean surface temperatures for 2023, 2024, and 2025 were 1.42, 1.50, and 1.41 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline (1850-1900), respectively.

Compounded by this super El Nino, research projects that 2026 has a high probability of surpassing 2024 to become the warmest year on record.

For China, in the East Asian monsoon region, the climatic impacts of this potent signal will span winter and spring and persist into 2027.

According to the China Meteorological Administration, temperatures across China during the upcoming winter are projected to be generally above normal, with a slightly higher frequency of cold waves and sharp temperature fluctuations, exhibiting a pattern of a "colder early winter and warmer late winter."

Overall precipitation across the country is expected to be above average, with frequent intense cooling and snowfall events in northern China and a high risk of episodic low-temperature rain, snow, and freezing weather in southern China.

In spring and summer 2027, although El Nino is projected to decay rapidly toward termination, its lagged impacts on China's climate will remain significant, with more extreme weather and climate events, notably higher temperatures and more intense, widespread summer heatwaves.

Notably, El Nino does not directly generate individual weather events; rather, it alters the probability distribution of weather extremes by exciting atmospheric teleconnection wave trains, modulating the intensity and position of the Western North Pacific Subtropical High, and reshaping the East Asian monsoon circulation.

Due to subsurface ocean thermal anomalies, stochastic atmospheric perturbations (such as westerly wind bursts), and the complex modulation of interdecadal signals under global warming, even super El Nino events of comparable magnitude can differ in the intensity of their tropical atmospheric forcing responses and the spatial distribution of their impacts.

On the other hand, numerical models exhibit inherent prediction errors regarding the oceanic forcing signal itself; for instance, predictions from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble for the peak amplitudes of the 1997 and 2015 super El Nino events exhibited a systematic overestimation of approximately 0.2 degrees Celsius.

Consequently, scientific climate predictions are inherently probabilistic forecasts rather than deterministic certainties.

Meanwhile, although El Nino is a potent forcing signal, it is by no means the sole driver.

Climate anomalies in China are also jointly modulated by multiple boundary conditions and climate modes, including the Indian Ocean Basin Mode, the North Atlantic Oscillation, Arctic sea ice, and Eurasian snow cover.

Any specific weather event that ultimately materializes is the combined result of multiple factors, meaning macro-scale climatic probabilities cannot be directly equated with the inevitable occurrence of micro-scale individual events.

Statistically warmer-than-normal or wetter-than-normal seasonal averages do not preclude the occurrence of localized, episodic extreme cold events or abrupt drought-to-flood transitions.

Ultimately, El Nino shifts the "odds" of extreme weather rather than directly dictating any single weather event.

Bridging the gap between probabilistic climate predictions and deterministic disaster-prevention actions is both a core agenda item for advancing the Global Goal on Adaptation at COP31 in Antalya and a central priority in China's implementation of the National 15th Five-Year Plan for Addressing Climate Change.

To address these forecast uncertainties, current research focuses on enhancing coordinated observations across the equatorial Pacific subsurface, multiple ocean basins, and mid-to-high latitudes to improve model initial conditions, while strengthening systematic bias correction for multi-model ensembles and combined dynamical and statistical downscaling to improve the prediction skill and spatial accuracy for regional extremes.

On the governance and action front, the UN is accelerating its "Early Warnings for All" initiative to achieve universal coverage of early warning systems by the end of 2027.

Concurrently, China is implementing the 15th Five-Year Plan's provisions on climate risk assessment, early warning, and adaptation, in alignment with the requirements for high-quality meteorological development.

While continuing to provide international public goods for early warning through platforms such as the Fengyun meteorological satellites, China is further strengthening the emergency response linkage mechanism led by meteorological early warnings, relying on refined operational coordination across timescales to shift disaster governance toward pre-disaster prevention.