Super El Niño is here, and its record-breaking strength is about to reshape America's winter

An already-strong El Niño has turned "super," crossing into territory the climate cycle has never reached before, CNN reported.

The natural phenomenon has strengthened at a breakneck pace since it was first declared in June and, according to CNN meteorologist Mary Gilbert, is stronger right now than it has ever been on this date in the historical record, with further intensification still expected.

How forecasters measure El Niño's strength


El Niño is defined by warmer-than-average water temperatures along the equator in the Pacific Ocean, which set off a chain of atmospheric shifts that ripple through weather patterns worldwide. To track its strength, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration measures how far above normal sea surface temperatures run in a specific stretch of the Pacific, using a metric called the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, or RONI.

The latest weekly RONI reading has hit 2.0 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above average, the threshold for the "very strong" category and the point at which the event unofficially earns the "super" label.

NOAA adopted RONI as its standard metric only this year; unlike the older method, it subtracts out how much of the Pacific's warming is due to broader climate change, in an effort to isolate El Niño's own contribution.

A rapid and record-setting build-up

This event has moved unusually fast. A weak La Niña, El Niño's cooler counterpart, was still in place as recently as the January-to-March period this year, according to NOAA data, before conditions flipped sharply. The World Meteorological Organization confirmed on June 2 that El Niño conditions were developing, and NOAA's Climate Prediction Center formally upgraded its outlook from a Watch to an Advisory on June 11.

Only a handful of past El Niño events have staged such a rapid turnaround, CNN reported, including the previous record-holder, the 1982-83 event. NOAA's latest forecast, issued last week, puts the odds of this El Niño peaking as the strongest on record since 1950 at 75% by the end of the year, while separate Climate Prediction Center outlooks have put the probability of a very strong event above 90% for this winter and the probability of it exceeding every El Niño since 1950 at 69% for the October-to-December window.

Its fingerprints are already visible

Even before reaching its expected winter peak, this El Niño has left a string of effects across the globe this summer, CNN reported. In the Atlantic, it has pushed storm-killing wind shear to extreme levels, producing a record-long wait for the season's first hurricane at what is typically the busiest stretch of the season; AccuWeather has since lowered its Atlantic forecast to 8 to 11 named storms, with just 3 to 4 hurricanes expected.

The same wind shear pattern has stayed away from the Pacific, where activity has instead surged. Sixteen storms, including two Category 5 hurricanes, have already formed and thrived in the eastern and central Pacific, with Hawaii facing three tropical systems in under a month.

Fourteen of those storms formed in the East Pacific basin alone, which, with two and a half months of the season still to run, is on pace to exceed its average seasonal total of 15 storms. Indonesia, meanwhile, is battling widespread wildfires, a pattern CNN noted is typical of El Niño years, which tend to leave the country drier than usual with limited rainfall to help crews control the blazes.

Global temperatures are also climbing

El Niño adds to global average air temperatures already elevated by climate change, and CNN reported it was a factor behind an unusually hot summer worldwide, with this past August ranking as Earth's hottest on record. Climate scientists have said the current event, sometimes referred to informally as a "Godzilla El Niño," a nickname coined by NASA's Bill Patzert in 2015 for the historic 1997-98 event, could help push 2026 and 2027 toward record-hot years globally.

Winter remains the season when El Niño typically peaks in strength and when its influence on global weather is most pronounced, meaning its biggest impacts, including on the coming US winter, are still to come.