Author: Seth Borenstein, Edith M. Lederer

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A strengthening El Niño that has already broken records for intensity at its early stages will likely spark even more wild weather worldwide as it grows, “adding fuel to a planet already on fire,” United Nations officials warned Friday.

A key area of the Pacific Ocean used to measure the strength of El Niño this week reached its warmest and most intense level ever recorded for the 15th week since it formed, still early in its lifetime, scientists at Columbia University reported.

El Niño—a natural warming of the Pacific near the equator that warps weather patterns worldwide—won’t peak for several months and should last through spring 2027, The Associated Press reports. The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) cautioned on Friday that it will likely trigger extreme heat, drought, and rainfall well into next year.

“Two months ago, I warned that El Niño was arriving on our doorstep. Now it is inside the house—and turning up the heat,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters Friday. “We have already endured a summer of extremes—record-shattering heat domes; apocalyptic wildfires raging in Spain, France and far beyond; thousands of lives lost in the scorching conditions.”

“But according to the latest science, this is only a warm-up act,” Guterres said, saying as the El Niño strengthens it will be “adding fuel to a planet already on fire.”

“We are in uncharted territory,” he said. “The climate crisis is in overdrive.”

Earlier in the week, citing projections by the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami, Bloomberg News reported that this El Niño could push average global warming above the 2°C maximum threshold in the 2015 Paris climate agreement for the first time ever. A 35 to 40% probability that that will happen for a single month in early 2027 is “a large probability,” Rosenstiel dean Ben Kirtman told the news agency. “That’s really large, and maybe that’s what people don’t appreciate.”

Scientists say most computer forecast models are showing that this El Niño will likely break the all-time record for intensity when it peaks, sometime late fall or so, but that’s not guaranteed, AP writes.

It’s still early in the nearly year-long life of a typical El Niño to see many direct effects yet, but they are coming, scientists said, agreeing with Guterres’ warnings. El Niño’s effects will combine with the long-term global warming from the burning of coal, oil, and gas.

“We’re seeing something that is the warmest July ever recorded for that specific region,” used as an El Niño indicator, Columbia University climate scientist Jeffrey Shaman said. “A year from now, it’s going to be very hot in the Northern Hemisphere. And we’re going to possibly have a summer like we’ve never experienced globally.”

But before then, the strong El Niño is likely to cause changes in rainfall patterns that will bring chaotic extremes to different parts of the world in fall and winter. There’s a strong chance of drought and wildfires in Indonesia, India, and other parts of Asia, south and east Australia, chunks of South America, and southern regions in Africa, the WMO warned. Other areas, including much of the United States and fire-struck Southern Europe, will get above-average rain.

“This El Niño, developing against the backdrop of unprecedented ocean heat and rising temperatures, provides governments and communities with a window of opportunity to anticipate risks and act before impacts unfold,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

While El Niño and climate change are separate phenomena, their effects create a harmful combination—and people aren’t taking the connection seriously enough, Guterres said.

“We hear much about record heat, drought, and wildfires—but not enough about the real change that is driving these events: the accelerating climate crisis powered by fossil fuels,” Guterres said.

Guterres said the world gets too absorbed by dramatic wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan to notice the dangers of climate change. On top of that, “there is a deliberate campaign, namely by the fossil fuel industry and some countries, in order to pretend that the problems we are witnessing indeed do not exist.”

The UN must be more active and mobilize public opinion “to tell governments it’s time to recognize this threat as an existential threat to us all,” he told reporters.

Much of the heat from the burning of fossil fuels gets trapped in the oceans, but “during an El Niño the ocean in some sense gets to return some of the heated buildups of global warming back to the atmosphere,” Shaman explained. Even though this El Niño will end, the released heat sticks around in the air, along with the higher temperatures, which will jump up again the next El Niño, he added.

Guterres called for more early warning systems and cooling systems to handle extreme heat. He said industry and governments need to make work safer, highlighting the garment industry, which has 90 million workers, most of them women. In 17 of the 23 biggest clothing making hubs, dangerously hot days jumped by more than 10% in the past 20 years, “yet most global brands set no heat standard for the factories that supply them.”

But mostly, “the world must stop fuelling the crisis,” Guterres said. “More coal, oil, and gas will lead to a more combustible future.”

The main body of this story was first published by The Associated Press and republished by The Canadian Press on July 31, 2026.