The already-strong El Niño has crossed into “super” territory after NOAA’s weekly Niño 3.4 Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI) hit 2.0°C (3.6°F) above average — the official “very strong” threshold — CNN reported Monday, citing NOAA forecasters.
El Niño, first declared in June, is stronger on this calendar date than any prior event in the record and is still intensifying. NOAA’s latest forecast gives about a 75% chance it peaks by year-end as the strongest event since records began in 1950. This is also the first El Niño tracked with NOAA’s newer RONI metric (rolled out in February), which subtracts climate-change warming of the Pacific to isolate the cycle’s “true” strength.
Impacts are already stacking up: extreme Atlantic wind shear has held the basin without a hurricane so far this season, while the eastern/central Pacific has spun up 16 storms including two Category 5s, with Hawaii facing three tropical systems in under a month. Indonesia is fighting widespread wildfires under El Niño’s drying pattern, and August was Earth’s hottest on record — with El Niño adding heat on top of climate change, CNN noted.
Sources: CNN
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