Super El Niño Forecast to Bring Record Amazon Drought — SkimNews
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- The current El Niño is set to be the most intense in modern history by a large margin, with Pacific ocean temperatures already well above normal and still rising, scientists monitoring its development say
- Met Office scientist Adam Scaife forecasts a "terribly dangerous [rainfall] anomaly" over the Amazon by January, noting that very strong El Niños concentrate heat near South America's coast and intensify regional impacts
- Amazon rainfall during June, July, and August 2026 was already well below average — while El Niño was still in its infancy — exceeding the summer anomaly of every previous large El Niño, per University of Hawaii's Tim Li
- The 2015-16 El Niño Amazon drought fueled wildfires that destroyed roughly 2.5 billion trees and plants and emitted 495 million tonnes of CO2, according to University of Oxford-led research cited in the report
- Scientists warn that repeated, increasingly severe droughts mean the Amazon is approaching a tipping point, at which the rainforest ecosystem collapses and is replaced by savannah
- Higher air temperatures coupled with drought create a positive feedback loop, Li says: less rainfall means less moisture and evaporation, which drives temperatures even higher
Why it matters: The Amazon is a globally significant carbon sink and biodiversity hotspot, and the 2015-16 El Niño showed what one drought can do — 495 million tonnes of CO2 released and 2.5 billion trees destroyed. With ocean temperatures already exceeding every previous El Niño and rainfall anomalies worst on record before the phenomenon has even peaked, the region is on track for the most extreme drought in modern observation, pushing a globally important ecosystem closer to irreversible collapse.
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