El Niño Advisory in effect — Niño 3.4 at +2.6 °C Latest updates
What El Niño does around the world, region by region — rainfall, drought, fisheries, agriculture, health and economies — based on official assessments from every continent.
IDEAM warns the developing El Niño could be among the strongest since 1950, and Colombia's grid operator says reservoirs could fall to 19.3% under a very strong scenario. Venezuela, dependent on the Guri dam, appears among the countries in the FAO–WFP anticipatory appeal.
6 official sources cited
Peru's ENFEN commission has kept its Coastal El Niño Alert in force through April 2027 while the anchoveta fishery sits suspended, and Ecuador has raised its alert to orange — even as the country's Amazon-side hydropower reservoirs face drought.
5 official sources cited
El Niño splits Brazil in two: descending dry air over Amazonia and the Northeast while a strengthened subtropical jet stalls rain-bearing fronts over the South. The most dangerous chapter — Amazon fire season — is forecast to arrive with a lag, in the second half of 2027.
6 official sources cited
With NOAA giving 81% odds of a very strong El Niño by October–December 2026, the classic winter map is back in play: a southward-shifted storm track favouring a wet South and Southeast, a drier Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies — and, across the border, Mexico's best drought position in six years.
5 official sources cited
NOAA gives a 55% chance of a below-average 2026 Atlantic season and Colorado State expects the lowest activity since 2015, as El Niño-driven wind shear tears at developing storms. The catch: suppressed seasons still produce landfalls, and the eastern Pacific typically gets busier.
4 official sources cited
ICPAC warns of dual risks in the Greater Horn — an extremely dry July–September in the north followed by intensely wet October–December short rains — while Southern Africa faces a 2026–27 season that Zimbabwe fears could rival 1997–98. FAO and WFP are seeking $202 million to act before, not after.
5 official sources cited
BMKG recorded 5,019 hotspots nationally through end-July and predicts fire risk peaking in August–September 2026, with more than half of Indonesia's land area forecast to receive below-normal rainfall. The peat mechanism is what turns a dry season into a regional haze crisis.
6 official sources cited
PAGASA's El Niño Advisory No. 1 confirms El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific, with 19 provinces already in meteorological drought in its May assessment and over an 80% probability the event runs into early 2027. For one of the world's largest rice importers, the squeeze lands on a tightening global market.
5 official sources cited
Vietnam's Mekong Delta is forecast to face severe drought and saltwater intrusion reaching 80–100 km inland from around November 2026 through April–May 2027 — an event authorities assess as equal to or worse than 2015–16. The winter-spring rice crop is being planned around it now.
6 official sources cited
Chinese state media report a 'super El Niño' warning from the Ministry of Natural Resources, with a wet autumn-winter in South China ahead — and the classic decaying-phase setup pointing to Yangtze flood risk in summer 2027. Japan expects a warm, low-snow winter.
5 official sources cited
IMD has lowered its 2026 southwest monsoon forecast to 90% of the long-period average after India's fifth-driest June in a century, kharif sowing is running about 20% behind last year, and New Delhi has banned sugar exports until 30 September 2026.
7 official sources cited
The Bureau of Meteorology assesses the tropical Pacific as being in an El Niño phase, Murray–Darling storages sit near 46%, and the emergency sector's risk assessment for June 2026–March 2027 ranks drought, bushfire and heat as the top three risks. A positive Indian Ocean Dipole may be forming — the amplifier behind 2019–20.
4 official sources cited
El Niño redraws the Pacific islands' water map twice over — shifting rainfall away from many island groups while tilting the ocean surface itself. PNG's prime minister has ordered nationwide preparedness, and Fiji and the Solomon Islands are already managing water stress.
5 official sources cited
The Panama Canal Authority is cutting Neopanamax draft limits in two steps to conserve Gatún Lake water, while leaving daily transit slots untouched. The move shows how an El Niño rainfall deficit in one watershed transmits into global shipping costs.
5 official sources cited
A joint FAO–WFP anticipatory action appeal covering June 2026 to March 2027 asks donors for US$202 million to act ahead of El Niño-driven drought and flooding in 22 high-risk countries. Current funding reaches only 1.2 million of the 8.8 million people the agencies say are at risk.
5 official sources cited
Floods, drought and smoke from an El Niño year translate into cholera, dengue and malaria outbreaks on a delay of one to six months. PAHO's July 2026 analysis maps that risk across the Americas and assesses 756 emergency hospitals for flood and supply-chain vulnerability.
5 official sources cited
Every global bleaching event on record has coincided with an El Niño, and NOAA Coral Reef Watch's outlook now shows high bleaching risk across the north Pacific, Florida and the Caribbean. In the western Pacific, a second, stranger mechanism looms: reefs killed not by heat but by falling sea level.
5 official sources cited