The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has warned Pacific nations that the 2026 El Niño could be unusually powerful due to climate change. Warmer ocean waters are fuelling what scientists are calling a potential "super El Niño," one with the capacity to disrupt rainfall patterns, trigger droughts and floods across multiple continents, and place significant pressure on food and water systems globally.

El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern that societies have managed for centuries. The concern in 2026 is not the phenomenon itself but its intensity. A warming climate is loading more energy into the oceans and atmosphere, amplifying the effects of events that would once have been manageable into something considerably harder to prepare for.

What Is El Niño and Why Does It Matter?

Under normal Pacific conditions, strong trade winds blow warm surface water westward, keeping the eastern Pacific relatively cool and allowing cold, nutrient-rich water to rise to the surface near South America. El Niño occurs when those trade winds weaken or reverse. Warm water that has accumulated in the western Pacific sloshes back eastward, raising surface temperatures across a vast stretch of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

That shift in ocean temperature has consequences that extend far beyond the Pacific. In Australia and the Amazon, reduced rainfall increases the risk of drought and wildfire. In the southern United States and the cone of South America, the opposite occurs: warmer, moisture-laden air drives heavier winter rainfall and a higher risk of flooding. In South Asia, El Niño can suppress the Indian summer monsoon, disrupting the rainfall that hundreds of millions of people and farmers depend on. The effects are not localised. They ripple across hemispheres, affecting agriculture, water supply, and energy systems simultaneously.

Why This El Niño Could Be Different

El Niños have occurred throughout recorded history. What makes 2026 different is the baseline temperature of the ocean and atmosphere into which this one is developing. A warming climate means there is more energy in the system, so when the trade winds weaken and warm water moves east, the water arriving is warmer than in previous cycles. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has predicted this could be one of the strongest El Niños ever recorded.

That said, El Niño is inherently difficult to predict with precision. Wind patterns play a decisive role in determining how warm water moves across the Pacific, and those patterns can shift in ways that either intensify or dampen the event. The honest answer is that current projections suggest a powerful El Niño, but the actual severity could be higher or lower than expected. What is not uncertain is the direction of the underlying trend.

The Risks Organisations Should Watch Closely

Predicting how the climate functions is no simple task. The atmospheric and oceanic systems that drive El Niño interact in ways that make precise prediction extremely difficult.

What is clear, regardless of the precise severity, is that a more volatile climate is increasing the fragility of the systems organisations depend on. The risks worth watching include:

• Agriculture and food production – crop failures, lower yields, food price inflation. 
• Water resources – droughts, reservoir pressure, water restrictions. 
• Energy systems – hydropower disruption and rising cooling demand. 
• Supply chains – transport disruption from flooding and extreme weather. 
• Insurance and finance – increasing exposure to weather-related losses.

The real issue is whether organisations are prepared when disruption arrives. Even businesses far removed from climate-sensitive industries can experience secondary effects through suppliers, energy prices, or commodity markets.

The Bigger Lesson Is Resilience

Companies can no longer treat extreme weather events as rare occurrences to hunker down and wait out. As these events become more frequent and disruptive, organisations need to invest in their adaptive capacity.

That could mean shifting supply chains away from climate-vulnerable regions, stress-testing portfolios for weather-related disruption, or building flexibility into procurement and logistics to absorb sudden shocks.

Climate stress testing, infrastructure resilience, and long-term planning can seem like an unnecessary cost in stable times. Until the disruption arrives and the window to prepare has already closed.

El Niño Will Pass, The Trend May Not

At some point, this El Niño will end. Weather patterns will shift. Headlines will move on. The immediate disruption, whatever form it takes, will eventually fade. The underlying trend will not.

Whether the challenge is drought, flooding, heatwaves, or supply chain disruption, each major climate event stresses the systems organisations rely on for profits. The first test may not break the system, but repeated stress can bring down all but the most adaptive companies.

The organisations that navigate this most effectively are those with the right people in the room: leaders capable of thinking beyond the next quarter, supply chain specialists who can anticipate disruption before it arrives, and risk professionals who understand that resilience is something built before a crisis, not during one.

The bigger question is what this El Niño reveals about our collective ability to adapt to a world where climate shocks are becoming more frequent, more disruptive, and more costly.