‘Off the charts’ El Niño is already the strongest since records began — SkimNews
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- James Hansen of Columbia University declared the El Niño "off the charts," saying his preferred metric — heat anomaly in the upper 300 meters of the equatorial Pacific — already exceeds the 1997-98 super El Niño, with maximum effects still months away.
- Adam Scaife at the UK Met Office pushed back on the surface-temperature read: the Niño3.4 index sits about 2°C above normal, "very high for this time of year but not quite as high" as the 1997/1998 peak of roughly 2.5°C, though the daily Niño3.4 hit 2.75°C earlier this month.
- Daniel Swain at the California Institute for Water Resources sided with Hansen, saying Niño3.4 values are "clearly now the highest on record for the time of year," and that long-lag running means mask a rapidly evolving event — though he noted November 2015's daily Niño3.4 reached nearly 3.1°C.
- Zeke Hausfather at Berkeley Earth called it the third strongest event on record under the standard metric region, but said upper-300m heat is "generally a leading indicator" of what will surface.
- Kevin Trenberth of NCAR agreed: "I agree that this El Nino is the biggest on record," while Scaife separately told the Met Office he had "never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts."
- Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University warned the event could rival the 1877-1878 El Niño, which caused famines killing roughly 50 million people (3-4% of the global population at the time) across Asia and South America.
- New Scientist reported that New Scientist asked Hansen for clarification on his Niño3.4 claim but had not received a response at publication time.
Why it matters: The debate centers on which metric counts, but every scientist quoted agrees this El Niño will soon exceed all previous events across measures. Scaife's forecast suggests 2026 will see climate impacts — drought, flooding, disrupted monsoons — that "far exceed recent experience" worldwide, with billions in agricultural and disaster costs at stake.
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