Analysis | An Unprecendented El Nino Is Headed Our Way: Are We Ready?
In India, a Super El Niño is likely to weaken the southwest monsoon, lowering reservoir levels and reducing agricultural yields.
Published : July 5, 2026 at 6:01 AM IST
El Niño has become a household term, thanks to a wave of headlines that often describe it with the synonym "super" in anticipation of a particularly strong event. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledges that this El Niño could be unusually potent in its ramifications, it has not adopted the informal label, as it falls outside official terminology.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) seasonal updates signal a marked shift toward El Niño conditions, forecasting up to a 90% chance of its continued dominance through the remainder of 2026.
El Niño is characterized by the warming of sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Occurring every 2 to 7 years, it disrupts global wind and weather patterns, frequently triggering extreme events such as heavy rains, droughts, and elevated global temperatures. By transferring heat energy from the ocean to the atmosphere, El Niño adds to human-induced warming, potentially making 2027 one of the hottest years on record.
A "Super El Niño" represents an extreme phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), in which sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific rise by 2°C or more above average. It earns the "super" designation because this massive ocean warming disrupts global atmospheric circulation on a much larger scale than standard events, leading to severe droughts, floods, and temperature extremes worldwide. The result is often deficient rainfall, extreme heatwaves, and depleted reservoir levels. Globally, it disrupts agricultural supply chains and spikes food inflation by triggering droughts in key exporting regions and shrinking crop yields.
In India, a Super El Niño is likely to weaken the southwest monsoon, lowering reservoir levels and reducing agricultural yields. India’s overall monsoon deficit for June officially closed at roughly 40%, with multiple localized pockets—such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Telangana—experiencing massive shortfalls ranging between 75% and 85%.
Normally, trade winds push warm water toward the western Pacific. During a super event, however, these winds weaken drastically or even reverse, allowing an immense pool of warm water to slosh back toward the Americas. This warm water shifts storm systems eastward, further weakening the winds. This self-reinforcing cycle—known as the Bjerknes feedback—pushes temperature anomalies beyond normal thresholds. Moreover, each Super El Niño occurs against a backdrop of already elevated global temperatures, compounding the heat energy released and resulting in unprecedented weather extremes.
It remains unclear whether the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)—an El Niño–like coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon in the Indian Ocean—will exert any moderating influence on regional climate variability over South Asia. The IOD and El Niño are two major drivers of global climate variability. While El Niño originates in the equatorial Pacific, the IOD functions as its Indian Ocean counterpart. The two often interact, sometimes amplifying and other times mitigating climate extremes such as droughts and heavy rainfall.
The IOD is defined by the sea-surface temperature (SST) gradient between the western and eastern equatorial Indian Ocean. During a positive IOD (+IOD), the western Indian Ocean (near the African coast) warms while the eastern basin (near Indonesia and Australia) cools. This configuration typically draws moisture-laden winds toward the Indian subcontinent, often resulting in above-average monsoon rainfall. Conversely, during a negative IOD (−IOD), the eastern Indian Ocean becomes warmer than the west, steering rainfall toward Indonesia and Australia and potentially weakening the Indian monsoon.
A positive IOD can moderate El Niño's impacts by generating an atmospheric circulation that counteracts the drought-inducing effects of Pacific warming. This mitigation works through two main phases: the warmer western Indian Ocean creates a region of low pressure, drawing moisture-bearing winds toward India.
This localized pressure system is expected to enhance rainfall over the subcontinent, effectively offsetting the atmospheric drying associated with El Niño. However, because El Niño is generally more powerful than the IOD, the latter can only partially counterbalance its effects. When both phenomena co-occur, the result is a complex tug-of-war: a strong positive IOD may save the Indian monsoon from total failure, though it can worsen drought conditions in Indonesia and Australia. Conversely, a negative IOD exacerbates El Niño's drying effects.
Despite these dynamics, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) forecasts below-normal rainfall, with a deficiency of up to 60%. Such a shortfall is likely to severely impact the country's agricultural sector, as well as its groundwater reserves, rivers, and irrigation channels.
Earth’s most recent El Niño, which lasted from June 2023 to April 2024, induced a massive burst of heat into an already warming planet—helping make 2024 the hottest year on record. That year also became the first to exceed the 1.5°C (2.7°F) warming threshold, a critical guardrail set by the Paris Agreement, beyond which climate change impacts are expected to become increasingly catastrophic. Now, the current El Niño is set to push global temperatures even higher this year and next, making it likely that Earth will match—or even break—those newly set records. The recent heatwave in Europe has once again proved that climate change is a major driver in the unprecedented warming of the continent, leading to worst-ever heat stress, linked to more than 1,000 deaths, according to the WHO.
History reminds us of past events like the great famine of 1875–77, which was caused by an extreme El Niño. Using actual rainfall data and tree-ring analysis, Deepti Singh and her colleagues, in a paper published in the Journal of Climate, explain why the multi-year global famines of 1876–78 were “associated with an extraordinary combination of preceding cool tropical Pacific conditions (1870–76), a record-breaking El Niño (1877–78), a record strong Indian Ocean dipole (1877), and record warm North Atlantic Ocean (1878) conditions.”
The great famine, with prolonged droughts, impacted India, China, Egypt, Morocco, Ethiopia, southern Africa, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela, causing fatalities of more than 50 million, while parts of the northwestern coastal regions and southeastern South America experienced intense rainfall and frequent flooding during the 1877–78 period.
In India, one of the deadliest humanitarian crises unfolded—massive drought caused an estimated 5.6 to 9.6 million deaths. The famine initially devastated southern and southwestern India—the Madras and Bombay Presidencies, as well as the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad. By 1877, it spread northward into the Central Provinces, the North-Western Provinces, and Punjab.
Severe malnourishment led to widespread outbreaks of cholera and smallpox. These diseases swept through relief camps, becoming the deadliest accomplice to famine. The crisis was heavily exacerbated by British colonial economic policies, which prioritized continued grain exports and laissez-faire markets over local survival. According to Singh and her co-authors, the Great Drought and the Global Famine cast a long shadow on the politics and economy across the tropics. For instance, starvation among the African population created conditions for French colonial expansion in North Africa. They argue that the El Niño and climate events of 1876–78 created the conditions for global inequalities that would later be characterized as the "first world" and "third world."
Modern scientists and climatologists study the 1877 event as a benchmark for the destructive, cascading potential of exceptionally strong El Niño cycles. The disaster highlights how closely connected global oceans and weather systems are. It demonstrates how a Pacific warming event can trigger cascading failures across the Indian and Atlantic Ocean basins, leading to widespread synchronized crop failures. It also proves that even minor shifts in seasonal rainfall can severely damage rain-fed agricultural systems in developing tropical regions. Importantly, the historical event underscores that famines are not driven by weather anomalies alone. The staggering death toll in the 1870s was largely the result of political choices, inequitable grain markets, and the breakdown of local water and grain storage systems.
Cyclical climate phenomena like El Niño demand unprecedented global cooperation. By driving widespread droughts, severe floods, and agricultural distress, these natural events underscore the critical need for countries to transcend geopolitical divides, prioritize food security, and collectively invest in anticipatory disaster management. Recurring cycles like El Niño—which typically happen every 3 to 7 years—trigger cascading impacts across the world.
The consequences are heavily felt in equatorial and tropical zones, including regions like Karnataka and Punjab, where these events can significantly disrupt monsoon patterns. Sharing drought-tolerant seeds, securing water reserves, and coordinating early-warning data require transparent, cross-border scientific collaboration. Overarching frameworks like the UN DESA Sendai Framework emphasize disaster risk reduction and integrating climate resilience into global development goals.
It is against this troubled backdrop that we must recognize the significance of a joint appeal from citizens of both India and Pakistan to Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif. They urge the two leaders to restart comprehensive bilateral dialogue and normalize relations. Their message is clear: wars must end — it is time to build a shared future together. From the Indus to the Brahmaputra, water flows without asking permission; it is a shared inheritance of humanity, not a weapon of division.
(DISCLAIMER: The facts and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not reflect the views of ETV Bharat.)
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