The onset of El Niño, confirmed in June by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other meteorological agencies, has triggered a wave of emergency preparedness across three continents. Projections indicate a 63 per cent probability that the phenomenon will reach the “Very Strong” category between November and January, placing it among the most intense events since modern records began in 1950. Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) assesses that the event will last from May 2026 until May 2027, with the most severe effects concentrated during the July-to-October dry season. Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (Ideam) similarly reports a greater than 95 per cent chance that El Niño conditions will persist and strengthen through the first quarter of 2027.

In Southeast Asia, the Indonesian government has moved to coordinate a nationwide mitigation effort. Home Affairs Minister Tito Karnavian instructed all regional heads to convene emergency planning meetings with disaster, agriculture and water agencies, and to integrate operations with the military, police and village administrations. The central government has tasked the agriculture ministry with reinforcing irrigation and pumping systems, while the national disaster agency prepares cloud-seeding operations in vulnerable areas. The primary concerns, according to BMKG briefings, are a heightened risk of forest and land fires driven by hotter, drier weather, and water shortages that could disrupt farming, plantations and hydroelectric output.

South American governments are mobilising on two contrasting fronts. In Colombia, where reservoir levels currently stand at a relatively comfortable 74 per cent of capacity, Ideam has urged regional authorities to update water-management contingency plans, enforce conservation measures and strengthen early-warning systems against wildfires. The acting environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, noted that the phenomenon had materialised roughly three months earlier than initial projections. In Argentina’s Corrientes province, Public Works Minister Jorge Meza warned that an extreme El Niño could inundate up to three million hectares, with the worst-affected areas expected to be the Santa Lucía and Iberá basins. The province is finalising a priority infrastructure plan, clearing urban drainage systems and designing protocols for the livestock sector, including possible pre-emptive cattle auctions. Brazil’s electricity sector, meanwhile, is bracing for increased price volatility: NOAA’s confirmation has added a new variable to an already tight market, where structural load growth of about 5 per cent this year coincides with the prospect of below-average rainfall in the North and Northeast, even as higher temperatures push up cooling demand in the Southeast.

In West Africa, the focus is on commodity supply chains. Fitch Solutions forecasts that El Niño will depress cocoa output in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana during the 2026/27 season, with Ivorian production expected to fall 17.5 per cent year-on-year to 1.7 million tonnes. The agency attributes the vulnerability to the dominance of smallholder farmers with limited access to irrigation and yield-enhancing technology, ageing tree stocks, and the likelihood that drier conditions will reduce fertiliser effectiveness just as the main-crop application window opens around September. The broader context, noted by analysts in São Paulo and London, is a pattern of increasingly frequent extreme El Niño events: should current projections hold, 2026/27 would join the historic episodes of 1982/83, 1997/98, 2015/16 and 2023/24. National and regional authorities are now racing to convert these warnings into operational plans before the peak impact months arrive.