Peru's ENFEN Keeps Coastal El Niño Alert as Anchoveta Retreat Toward Shore

Peru's multi-agency El Niño committee has maintained its Coastal El Niño Alert, warning that the warm event off the country's Pacific coast will most likely reach strong magnitude and persist until April 2027 — and that an extraordinary event late this year cannot be ruled out.

The assessment came in Comunicado Oficial N° 13-2026, issued on 17 July by ENFEN, the committee that brings together Peru's marine institute IMARPE, weather service SENAMHI, naval hydrography directorate DHN, geophysical institute IGP, civil defence agency INDECI and water authority ANA. The formal alert status — "Alerta de El Niño Costero" — remains in force.

Two events, two yardsticks

ENFEN watches the ocean through a different lens than most international agencies. Its primary concern is the Niño 1+2 region, the patch of ocean directly off Ecuador and northern Peru, rather than the central-Pacific Niño 3.4 region that anchors definitions used by NOAA and the WMO. The distinction matters: the coastal region drives Peru's rainfall and fisheries, and it can warm earlier and harder than the basin average. NOAA's monitoring in early July put the Niño 1+2 anomaly at +2.7°C, as detailed in NOAA's July diagnostic discussion.

For the coastal event, ENFEN's most likely scenario is a strong ("fuerte") magnitude continuing through April 2027. The committee explicitly does not discard an extraordinary ("extraordinario") magnitude — the category associated with Peru's most damaging historical episodes — for late 2026.

For the central Pacific, ENFEN expects the Niño 3.4 region to reach very strong ("muy fuerte") magnitude during November–December 2026, with strong conditions the most probable state through the austral summer of December 2026 to March 2027, possibly extending into April.

The anchoveta signal

Some of the most concrete evidence in the communiqué comes from the water itself. IMARPE's monitoring shows the anchoveta — the small fish that underpins Peru's fishmeal industry, the largest single-species fishery in the world — behaving as it does in warm events: the stock is pushed toward the coastline and deeper than normal, in ENFEN's words "replegada hacia el litoral y más profunda que lo normal," with increased energy depletion in the fish.

At the same time, warm-water species are moving in. ENFEN reports arrivals of sierra, albacore and yellowfin tuna in Peruvian waters — a partial compensation for artisanal fleets, and a classic marker of coastal El Niño conditions. The broader pattern of winners and losers is covered in our guide to global impacts.

Heat now, rain later

For the July–September window, ENFEN expects coastal air temperatures to run well above normal — an unusually warm winter for Lima and the coastal strip. Rainfall along the northern coast is forecast to be normal to above normal during this period.

The larger rainfall concern arrives with the austral summer. For the 2026–27 summer season, ENFEN's outlook points to above-normal rainfall on the northern and central coast — the setup in which past strong coastal events have produced flooding and activated the seasonal rivers of the Peruvian desert. That is the scenario civil defence planners will be working against between now and December.

What to watch

ENFEN publishes its communiqués on a regular cycle while the alert stands, and the next one is scheduled for Friday 14 August 2026. Key things to look for: whether the "extraordinario" scenario for late 2026 gains or loses probability, how the anchoveta stock responds as warming continues, and whether the summer rainfall outlook for the north coast sharpens. With the central Pacific event still strengthening toward its projected year-end peak, Peru's coastal alert is likely to remain a fixture of the event timeline for months to come.