El Niño Advisory · NOAA Climate Prediction Center
El Niño is active and strengthening
BOM relative Niño 3.4 · weekly · El Niño threshold +0.8°C
Niño 3.4, conventional index, weekly — shown for freshness · NOAA threshold +0.5°C · week centered July 22, 2026
official classification — NOAA RONI · seasonal · threshold ±0.5°C · AMJ 2026
RONI subtracts the background warming of the whole tropical ocean, isolating El Niño's own signal — the gap between the numbers above is the story, not an error. The weekly pair is the cleanest apples-to-apples version of that same gap: same week, same cadence — +1.9°C once the tropics' shared warming is stripped out, versus +2.2°C raw.
Forecast peak: Oct–Dec 2026 · 81% chance of a very strong event (at least +2.0°C) · 88% chance of at least a strong one · ~97% chance it persists into early spring 2027.
The race: 2026–27 vs the three strongest El Niños on record
Relative Oceanic Niño Index — NOAA's official relative ENSO metric
Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI), CPC table throughout — aligned Jan of onset year → Jun of year two · ElNinoLive. Legend peaks are monthly maxima of this series. NOAA's official relative ENSO metric — see methodology.
The race: 2026–27 vs the three strongest El Niños on record
conventional index — shown for comparability with historical events
Monthly mean Niño 3.4 anomalies (detrended ERSSTv5), aligned Jan of onset year → Jun of year two · ElNinoLive. Legend peaks are monthly maxima of this series; the official ONI peaks quoted in our event histories are three-month means and read slightly lower. Shown below the RONI chart above for comparability with historical events — see methodology.
Sea surface temperature anomalies, live
Warm water spreading along the equatorial Pacific is El Niño's signature
Official ENSO outlook probabilities
Chance of each state by overlapping three-month season · outlook of 2026-07-09
100% El Niño for the OND 2026 peak season (outlook of 2026-07-09).
Southern Oscillation Index
The atmosphere's side of ENSO: sustained negative SOI accompanies El Niño.
Latest: -1.4 (Jun 2026) — negative readings sit on the El Niño side.
The 2026–27 event so far
Feb 2026
La Niña fades
The 2025–26 La Niña weakens below thresholds.
Apr 2026
Neutral Pacific
ENSO-neutral conditions through spring.
May 2026
Threshold crossed
Weekly Niño 3.4 exceeds +0.5°C.
Jun 2026
El Niño Advisory
NOAA declares El Niño conditions present.
Jul 2026 · now
Event strengthening
RONI: +0.5°C (weak) · conventional weekly Niño 3.4: +2.2°C.
Oct–Dec 2026
Forecast peak
81% odds the peak reaches “very strong” (≥ +2.0°C).
Latest forecast updates
All updatesJuly 9, 2026
NOAA Raises the Odds of a Very Strong El Niño to 81%
The July outlook jumps very-strong odds from 63% to 81%, centers the peak on Oct–Dec 2026 — and the ocean is running ahead of 1997 and 2015.
June 12, 2026
NOAA Declares El Niño — and the Odds of a Very Strong Event Rise
The Advisory is official: ~100% odds El Niño lasts through winter, 88% at least strong, 63% very strong. How June 2026 compares to 1997 and 2015.
May 14, 2026
El Niño Has Arrived: The Pacific Crosses the Threshold
Weekly readings have crossed the +0.5°C line for the first time since the La Niña ended. Here's what must happen before an official declaration.
What it means where you live
All regionsCalifornia
California's wettest winters cluster in strong El Niño years — and 2026–27 is forecast to be one of them.
Australia
Dry east, primed fuels, a wheat belt on edge — Australia faces the sharpest downside of a strong El Niño winter and spring.
India
A billion-person economy runs on four months of rain — and El Niño historically loads those months toward deficit. With famous exceptions.
Indonesia
The archipelago sits under El Niño's departing rains — drought, peat fires and regional haze are the historical price of a strong event.
Peru & South America
The place that named El Niño still takes its hardest punch: coastal floods, a collapsing fishery — and a wetter windfall far to the south.
Atlantic Basin
The one El Niño impact that arrives before winter: shear-suppressed Atlantic activity — with the 'it only takes one' asterisk written in 1992.
The El Niño Briefing
One email a week while the event runs: the index moves that mattered, what changed in the forecasts, and one impact story explained.
Put this tracker on your site
A compact live-status widget — current Niño 3.4 value, intensity gauge and trend — embeddable with one iframe snippet. Free with attribution.
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