What is el Niño, and what does it mean for weather, water, and the global economy?

The last three months of sea surface temperature anomaly in the eastern pacific.

It's like watching Godzilla rising from the depths.

We crossed the threshold this year.

The blue is cold, black neutral, red warm, yellow hot.
It runs through three times on this video: pic.twitter.com/B3Nb8M6p3Q

— tern (@1goodtern) August 6, 2026

The last three months of sea surface temperature anomaly in the eastern pacific.
It's like watching Godzilla rising from the depths.
We crossed the threshold this year.
The blue is cold, black neutral, red warm, yellow hot. 

 

From Wired by Ritsuko Kawai 

This year’s El Niño is shaping up to be the strongest on record.
Here’s what to expect.

EL NIÑO LOOKS to reach an intensity unprecedented in recorded history.

Characterized by warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, El Niño occurs every few years.
Meteorological agencies and researchers around the world are on high alert because when the heat stored in the ocean is released into the atmosphere, it triggers a chain reaction that affects rainfall, temperatures, and even hurricane activity around the world.

This year’s El Niño has gained strength at an exceptional speed, and it will wreak havoc on everything from fisheries to ski seasons.
Not all impacts are bad—the parched Southwest, for example, is likely to see more winter precipitation—but anticipating them is the key to being prepared.

What exactly is happening now, and what might happen in the coming months? Read on to understand what El Niño is, why this one might be a super El Niño, and where its impacts will be most acutely felt.

What Is El Niño?

Declaring an El Niño requires meeting a certain threshold of oceanic heat in the Pacific—specifically, a region known as Niño 3.4.
It’s an area that sits between Niño 3 and Niño 4 if you want to geek out even more.
In plain language, it’s a region in the eastern-central tropical Pacific.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses the three-month average sea surface temperature of the region to determine if an El Niño is in effect.
If the ocean is 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal for three overlapping three-month periods, it’s officially an El Niño.

Other weather agencies do things a little differently.
Japan’s Meteorological Agency monitors a slightly different region using its own criteria, while the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s threshold has an atmospheric component as well.

In addition to warmer oceans, the trade winds that blow from east to west also weaken.
That allows seawater to pile up on the eastern side of the Pacific.
In 1997 and 2015—when El Niño events were among the strongest on record—sea levels rose more than 18 centimeters (7 inches) above average.

All this increases the odds of shifts in weather around the world.
There’s the aforementioned increase in rainfall in the Southwest as well as a corresponding decrease in Pacific Northwest precipitation.
Atlantic hurricane season tends to be milder as well, with fewer storms.

Indonesia sees an increased risk of drought, as do parts of southern Africa.
El Niño also tends to raise the odds of winter warmth in Japan and parts of Australia and Brazil.
(We can only speak of probabilities, because El Niño is not the only phenomenon affecting the weather on a given day or in a given season, but the phenomenon tilts the odds.

What Is a Super El Niño?

“Super El Niño” isn’t an official term any meteorological agency uses, but scientists generally use it to define any event where temperatures rise by at least 2 degrees Celsius above average.
While there’s no standardized definition, four particular El Niños are ones that check the super box: 1982–83, 1997–98, 2015–16, and 2023–24.

When the Super El Niño occurred in 1982–83, the Colorado River Basin in the US was hit by record-breaking heavy snowfall.
Combined with high spring temperatures and rainfall, the river’s flow exceeded 1.5 times the average.
Reservoirs upstream filled to capacity one after another, forcing emergency releases, and Lake Mead also reached near-capacity, causing water to overflow from the Hoover Dam spillway for the first time in about 40 years.
As a result, the basin suffered significant flood damage.
In other words, the impacts of El Niño that may be “good” can still lead to bad outcomes.

In 1997–98, Indonesia was hit by the worst drought in the past half-century, while the 2023-24 super El Niño contributed to the worst drought in over 100 years for southern Africa.
Conditions were so extreme that approximately 61 million people needed humanitarian aid.

How Is This El Niño Shaping Up?

There is a greater than 90 percent probability of this El Niño becoming “very strong” this fall and winter, according to NOAA.

Modeling by Berkeley Earth shows that median temperatures for the Niño 3.4 region could reach 3.6 degrees Celsius above normal—even after accounting for the effects of long-term global warming.
This would exceed the all-time high recorded during the 2015–16 El Niño by approximately 0.8 degrees Celsius.
Given that the difference between the strongest and fifth-strongest El Niño events over the past 150 years was only about 0.5 degrees Celsius, this represents an exceptional level of warming.

This El Niño event is also developing at a faster pace than usual.
While the 2015 El Niño developed from a situation where sea surface temperatures were already rising, this year’s began in a state closer to a La Niña (more on that later), with below-average sea surface temperatures.
Nevertheless, it is said to be developing even more rapidly than the 1997–98 super El Niño.

The economic impact of El Niño cannot be overlooked either.
An analysis found that the 1997–98 El Niño resulted in a cumulative loss of approximately $5.7 trillion over the following five years.

What About La Niña?

The counterpart to El Niño is La Niña, which is characterized by cooler-than-normal ocean temperatures in the Pacific.
It also occurs every few years, and the effects are generally opposite to those of El Niño.
That includes higher odds of more rain in Indonesia, a more active Atlantic hurricane season, and drier conditions in the Southwest, among others.
But with El Niño likely in the driver’s seat until at least spring, those impacts aren’t the ones to watch out for.

 

Links :

• NewScientist : ‘Off the charts’ El Niño is already the strongest since records began 

World ocean floor

 

 Inspired by the  classic 1977 map by Heezen, Tharp, and Berann, the new seafloor map incorporates the latest bathymetric data, depicting topographic features with plan oblique relief and even cast shadows

source : https://www.shadedrelief.com/world-ocean-floor/ 

 

 Blue Earth Bathymetry 1.0

 http://www.shadedrelief.com/atlantic/

 

 

Blue Earth Bathymetry 2.0, terrain data for making attractive maps of the ocean floor.

Developed with National Geographic Society funding.

Custom terrain data for making attractive small-scale maps of the world ocean floor. Created by merging the latest GEBCO and BathDNN25 data, Blue Earth Bathymetry 2.0 is more detailed and accurate than version 1.0. 

https://shadedrelief.com/blue-earth-2/  

created by : Tom Patterson 

Iceberg at Ilulissat

🔴 INSOLITE - #Groenland : Un immense iceberg s’est retourné ce matin au large d’Ilulissat, offrant un spectaculaire phénomène naturel.

👉 Aucun blessé n’a été signalé. Les autorités locales n’ont fait état d’aucun dégât. 🌊🧊 pic.twitter.com/P2rHzfYWmp

— FranceNews24 (@FranceNews24) July 26, 2026

 A massive iceberg was seen turning over off the coast of Greenland, near Ilulissat. (July 26, 2026)

 Video captured by an eyewitness showed the moment the iceberg turned over, creating waves close to the coastal city.

 

Ilulissat is home to the Unesco listed Ilulissat Icefjord and is located on the west coast of the island.

“Large icebergs can remain grounded or trapped near the mouth of the icefjord while they melt, fracture and become small enough to move into Disko Bay,”

Visualization with the GeoGarage platform (DGA Denmark nautical raster chart) 

 

Watch the complete collapse and rollover of a massive iceberg near Ilulissat, Greenland, on July 25, 2026. (video full 55 mn in real time)

What happens to maritime visibility during a security crisis?

 Maritime activity does not disappear when AIS does : RF data reveals it

 

From LinkedIn UnseenLabs

In complex geopolitical environments, maritime awareness cannot rely on cooperative tracking systems alone.
As tensions escalated recently in the southern Red Sea, Unseenlabs analyzed space-based RF data collected around Bab el-Mandeb to understand how maritime activity evolved during the crisis.

Following the attack on the Encelia, the maritime picture changed rapidly.

 

 

Some vessels may have switched off AIS to reduce their exposure in a high-risk area, while others may have sought to conceal suspicious activity.

 Bringing clarity when the maritime picture becomes uncertain

 

In both cases, AIS silence creates uncertainty.

It does not mean that maritime activity has disappeared.
Because RF data is collected independently of AIS and other cooperative systems, it can reveal active emitters that conventional maritime tracking does not show.

What conventional maritime tracking did not show.

RF data reveals activity not declared through AIS

Because AIS positions can be publicly accessible, vessels may switch off AIS to reduc exposure in high-risks areas.

AIS silence can signal protection or concealment. 

RF insights remain fully independent of AIS and other cooperative tracking systems 

 

This provides an additional layer of visibility when the operational picture becomes incomplete or difficult to interpret.

Links :

• BBC : Yemen's Houthis attack Saudi tanker as US launches more Iran strikes

Ends with a bang: Why lightning stopped stalking the Strait of Malacca

Lightning strikes love shipping lanes because – as we’ve only recently learned – those ships create the dirty skies that facilitate the formation of storm clouds. (Credit: Elke Scholiers/Getty Images)

From BigThing by Franck Jacobs

On a world map of lightning strikes, the world’s busiest sea routes glowed bright — until ships cleaned up their act.

• Lightning is proverbially unpredictable. So why does it seek out shipping lanes?
• This map shows an uncanny concentration of strikes over the Strait of Malacca.
• The culprit is pollution, and cleaner maritime fuel has reduced lightning.

A BOLT FROM THE blue that never strikes the same place twice: Lightning is the proverbial placeholder for the unpredictable.

Nature’s light show erupts whenever and wherever positive and negative charges within a storm cloud collide with sufficient force.

But if lightning is truly place-agnostic, why does it have a thing for cargo ships?
 

Something odd in the skies above the strait

Look at these paired maps of where the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea rub shoulders.

The lower one shows a bright orange trail of particulate matter that perfectly tracks with one of the world’s busiest sea routes.

It skirts Sri Lanka, hugs Sumatra, squeezes through the Strait of Malacca, then heads north past Vietnam toward China.

 

Lightning is not only unevenly distributed, on the top map you can trace the busy sea lane from the bottom map, revealed by the high concentrations of particulate matter emitted by ships’ engines. (Credit: Joel A. Thornton e.a.: “Lightning enhancement over major oceanic shipping lanes”, in Geophysical Research Letter – CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The top map shows annual lightning strikes and immediately contradicts the assumption that these strikes are randomly distributed.

The redder shades blanket land masses, confirming that lightning overwhelmingly prefers terra firma. Land heats up much faster than seas and oceans, generating the strong upward currents that fuel thunderstorms.

In fact, researchers have found that 90% of all lightning occurs over land, which covers just 30% of the planet’s surface.

Yet, something odd happens in the skies above the Strait of Malacca.

It’s a genuine lightning magnet.

So are the waters that fan out in straight red lines to the west and northeast.

Taken together, they form a near-perfect doppelgänger for the shipping lane traced on the lower map.

Lightning, it would seem, enjoys the company of large, ocean-going vessels stuffed with commodities, consumables, and consumer goods.

And the missing link between shipping and lightning is the particulate matter on the lower map.

Clouds are needy creatures

Clouds aren’t just decorative puffs of vapor looking for a place to rain on.

They’re needy creatures.

That vapor requires microscopic specks of something to condense into tiny airborne droplets that can eventually become rain.

Over the open ocean, the air is comparatively clean.

But then come those cargo ships, burning bunker fuel that contains 3.5% sulfur.

Their smokestacks vent an invisible confetti of sulfate particles into the air above that give the moisture exactly what it needs to go from a wispy coastal haze to a churning stack of convective cloud: structure.

The trillions of tiny droplets formed by the pairing of particles and moisture fatten the clouds, which climb higher, past the altitude where temperatures drop below freezing.

Those droplets then turn into ice crystals.

Pretty soon, the turbulence in those clouds sorts itself out into positive charges in the frozen upstairs and negative ones in the merely chilly downstairs.

When that tension becomes intolerable, it is evened out by the discharge of hundreds of millions of volts.

Kapow!

Once you know the connection, it all seems obvious.

But scientists didn’t recognize just how neatly lightning follows global shipping lanes — as if someone had taken a marker pen to a nautical chart — until a 2017 paper published in Geophysical Research Letters pointed it out.

Unintended effect of a cap on sulfur

Did we say follows? We meant followed.

In 2020, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) capped sulfur content in marine fuel at 0.5%, down from 3.5%.

The measure was aimed at reducing respiratory disease and acid rain in port cities. Any effect on lightning was entirely unintended, but dramatic and immediate nonetheless.

A study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics in 2025 found that lightning over shipping lanes has dropped by more than 40%.

Even more dramatically, anomalous lightning — the surplus that scientists couldn’t explain by normal weather phenomena — fell by 67%, from an average of 3.9 strikes per square kilometer per year to just 1.25.

 

Lightning flashes as the USS Abraham Lincoln transits the Strait of Malacca back in 2010. These days, lightning storms in the narrow waterway between Sumatra (Indonesia) and the Malay Peninsula (Malaysia) are a lot less common, thanks to cleaner maritime fuels. (Credit: Colby K. Neal/U.S. Navy)

Fewer polluting particles means fewer (but larger) droplets.

More of those clouds rain themselves out before they go electric.

In short: less sulfur, less lightning.

Nature’s way of saying “Thank you”

There is something satisfying about that chain of evidence.

Not because there are now fewer fireworks over the Strait of Malacca; who doesn’t like a good light show?

But because it confirms that reducing one particular source of pollution can have a measurable, real-world effect.

Even if by accident.

With shipping lanes serving as nature’s Leyden jar, the IMO’s inadvertent science experiment proves that dirty skies are electrically more productive, and vice versa.

Those large, ocean-going vessels are still out there, churning along under considerably cleaner skies.

As a result, they’re a lot less likely to be hit by Thor’s hammer.

That may be the atmosphere’s way of saying: Thank you for not making a mess.