Oct 16, 2026 · 52 min · 15 segments
Boosted by climate change, this year’s El Niño has intensified into a “Super El Niño,” meaning sea surface temperatures in parts of the Pacific are over 2 degrees Celsius hotter than average. How this…
Megha MajumdarGuest
Nathan DonleyGuest
Seth BorensteinGuest
Ainsley O'NeillHost
Paloma BeltranHost
Seth Bornstein is a science writer at the Associated Press, and we called him up for an overview of what we can expect in the months ahead.
This is, by all accounts, forecast to be the strongest El Niño that's been recorded in modern times and perhaps for at least a thousand years using choral records.
And so during an El Niño, the biggest effect is that the globe in general gets warmer.
Yet, that means that it usually will cause the next year to be a record warm year.
This is a super El Nino, and it is so strong that this year may be a record year.
But even if 2026 is a record warmer year, it is incredibly likely to be broken by 2027.
But I think what we're mostly here to talk about is what El Nino does to hurricanes and typhoons, especially hurricanes in the Atlantic, which is where Florida, the Gulf of Mexico is.
And that was the first hurricane of the season, and it was one of the latest first hurricanes of the season in decades.
You have to go back to 1914, when there were no hurricanes that season in the Atlantic.
But of course, they weren't monitoring as well, so there may have been, and they just didn't see it.
Seth Bornstein is a science writer at the Associated Press, and we called him up for an overview of what we can expect in the months ahead.
This is, by all accounts, forecast to be the strongest El Niño that's been recorded in modern times and perhaps for at least a thousand years using choral records.
And so during an El Niño, the biggest effect is that the globe in general gets warmer.
Yet, that means that it usually will cause the next year to be a record warm year.
This is a super El Nino, and it is so strong that this year may be a record year.
But even if 2026 is a record warmer year, it is incredibly likely to be broken by 2027.
But I think what we're mostly here to talk about is what El Nino does to hurricanes and typhoons, especially hurricanes in the Atlantic, which is where Florida, the Gulf of Mexico is.
And that was the first hurricane of the season, and it was one of the latest first hurricanes of the season in decades.
You have to go back to 1914, when there were no hurricanes that season in the Atlantic.
But of course, they weren't monitoring as well, so there may have been, and they just didn't see it.
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