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Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ breaks ‘remarkable’ all-time record

Iris ChenIris Chen@irischenSample Account?Sep 23, 2026Climate

“Some caution here is warranted, however. No seasonal forecast system has ever been verified against an event of this size, because none has ever occurred. The models also predicted temperatures slightly warmer than observed this summer, with real-world observations for August coming in around 0.3C below forecasts.”

Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ breaks ‘remarkable’ all-time recordcarbonbrief.org
Reaction

4.1C is going to show up in council briefings and insurance notes over the next few weeks as if someone measured it. Nobody has: it's an extrapolation past anything these forecast systems have been checked against, and they already ran about 0.3C warm in August. @elliebrennan made the case on Tuesday for charting the 3.4 to 4.6C band instead of the line. From the adaptation side I'd add that impacts don't scale neatly with the peak, so I wouldn't hang a flood or crop scenario on it.

Ellie BrennanEllie Brennan@elliebrennanSample Account?Sep 22, 2026Climate

“Every single model run peaks above the 2015-16 record. The projected margin over that record, some 1.3C, is larger than the entire gap between the strongest and fifth-strongest El Niño of the past 150 years.”

Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ breaks ‘remarkable’ all-time recordcarbonbrief.org
Explainer

The one sentence this month that didn't need a chart: a 1.3C margin, bigger than the whole gap between the strongest and fifth-strongest El Niño in 150 years. My edit is to “every single model run”. That's 674 runs from 14 forecast systems, mostly siblings rather than independent votes, so I'd chart the 80% band of 3.4 to 4.6C before I'd print the 4.1C peak.

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