Jauhn Etienne Villaruel

Members of the Parks Development Office pull out dried leaves and other debris from the center Island along Burgos Avenue in Manila on May 2, 2024, The heat index in various parts of the Philippines continues to climb, reaching dangerous levels as El Nino grips the country. Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News

Article (news)

Agence France-Presse

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/178364364174620240502-el-nino-heat-metro-manila-JC-1.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Members of the Parks Development Office pull out dried leaves and other debris from the center Island along Burgos Avenue in Manila on May 2, 2024, The heat index in various parts of the Philippines continues to climb, reaching dangerous levels as El Nino grips the country. <em>Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News/File</em></span></span></span></div><p>WASHINGTON, United States — The El Niño weather pattern picked up strength over the past month and is highly likely to &quot;rank among the largest&quot; ever recorded when it peaks between October and December, US forecasters said Thursday.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/weather-traffic/2026/7/7/el-nino-is-expected-to-break-records-top-expert-1950">El Niño is expected &#x27;to break records&#x27;: top expert</a></div><p>El Niño warms surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, triggering worldwide changes in winds, atmospheric pressure and rainfall patterns, and pushing warmer overall global temperatures.</p><p>In its latest update, the US Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said there is an 81 percent chance of a &quot;very strong&quot; El Niño between October and December that would rank among the largest such events in the historic record going back to 1950.</p><p>&quot;Very strong&quot; is defined as being 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more above an index value.  The CPC also put the odds at 97 percent that the event will persist through early spring 2027.</p><p>That adds to a prediction made by Tim Stockdale, an El Niño expert of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, who said this week it would be &quot;a very, very big surprise&quot; if the event failed to be a record-breaker.</p><p>El Niños typically have knock-on effects globally, including drier conditions and drought in Australia, along with wetter winters in East Africa and the southern United States.</p><p>Isla Simpson, a climate scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, told AFP that &quot;there&#x27;s quite a lot of evidence from our models that global warming increases the variance of El Niño, so you get bigger El Niño events and also bigger La Nina events.&quot;</p><p>La Niña is the cooling phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle.</p><p>Within the United States, El Niño events are typically &quot;drought-busting&quot; over some regions including California but drying in others.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/weather-traffic/2026/7/3/el-nino-set-to-be-strong-un-warns-1207">El Nino set to be strong, UN warns</a></div><p>The connections to Europe are smaller and less certain, but there is some evidence that El Niño can increase the likelihood of cold conditions later in the winter in Northern Europe, said Simpson.</p><p>&quot;Most likely, what we&#x27;ll see are the canonical El Niño teleconnections,&quot; she said, &quot;but in any given event, things can deviate from that just because we have all of these random uncertainties. There&#x27;s weather that happens on top of these longer timescale predictable signals.&quot;</p><p>Sea surface temperatures are now 1.2C (2.2F) above average in a defined stretch of the equatorial Pacific known as the Nino 3.4 region, the CPC said.</p><p>Combined with warming waters below the surface and shifting wind and pressure patterns, the &quot;ocean-atmosphere system reflected a strengthening El Niño.&quot;</p><p>While El Niño usually peaks between November and February, the resulting spike in temperatures typically comes later.</p><p>Compounded with human-induced climate change, the last El Niño contributed to making 2023 the second-hottest year on record and 2024 the all-time high.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><div><strong><br/></strong></div><div><strong>RELATED VIDEOS</strong></div><div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JicDtczUTnI?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pxWKbJaDPhs?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y19WEesgy2k?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div>

<p>The El Niño weather pattern picked up strength over the past month and is highly likely to "rank among the largest" ever recorded when it peaks between October and December, US forecasters said Thursday.</p>

The El Niño weather pattern picked up strength over the past month and is highly likely to "rank among the largest" ever recorded when it peaks between October and December, US forecasters said Thursday.

Strengthening El Niño likely to 'rank among largest' on record—US agency

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Strengthening El Niño likely to 'rank among largest' on record—US agency

Agence France-Presse

Published July 10, 2026 08:36 AM PHT

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