The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that the ongoing El Niño event is likely to intensify rapidly and become a strong episode between July and September 2026. US government forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration assign a greater than 60 percent chance of a very strong event in the November to January period. The immediate consequence is a sharply elevated probability of heatwaves, droughts and destructive downpours across multiple continents, with potentially severe effects on agriculture, water security and public health.

El Niño, named by Peruvian fishermen centuries ago for its tendency to peak around Christmas, arises from abnormally warm waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This cycle disrupts global atmospheric circulation, but its regional impacts are uneven and can be hard to predict. Climate scientists note that the current episode is unfolding on top of oceans already heated by long-term warming, which is likely to amplify extremes. The 2023-24 El Niño, one of the five strongest on record, produced devastating floods in Brazil but did not trigger all the effects that models had projected, underscoring the phenomenon’s volatile nature.

Nowhere are the immediate economic stakes clearer than in food production. In Brazil, agribusiness analysts warn that irregular rains could reduce coffee yields and quality, while corn production is expected to suffer—global corn productivity typically falls about 4 per cent during El Niño events, though soybean output sometimes rises. A poor harvest would put upward pressure on food prices and may lead the Ministry of Finance to raise its official inflation forecast from 4.5 per cent. Across the Pacific, Taiwanese meteorologists say a warm winter is almost certain, with heat expected to persist into the spring and summer of 2027, prompting the government to draft a tiered heat-alert system for schools and vulnerable groups. In the Mekong region, Cambodian officials report that rice paddies are drying out and fish deaths are already occurring in overheated lakes. In Vietnam, heatwaves of up to 40 °C threaten the country’s rice bowl, with 350,000 hectares of winter-spring paddy at risk. Mexican forecasters, meanwhile, see a heightened danger of extreme rains in the centre-north, more intense Pacific hurricanes and drought in some regions, all of which could strain water supplies and farming.

Infrastructure operators are scrambling to adapt. Major Brazilian water utilities are using artificial intelligence to forecast demand and river levels months in advance, and are expanding reservoirs and contingency plans. Regulators are beginning to require climate resilience measures. The next factual marker is the expected peak of the event during the boreal winter of 2026-27; the WMO’s monthly updates and impact assessments from national agencies will offer the first concrete signal of how severely this El Niño will strain the global food system.