Pacific sea temperatures hit 4.0 degrees Celsius above normal in September, threatening harvests, economies and global food prices through 2028

According to Japan’s Meteorological Agency, El Niño reached its strongest level on record in September this year, and there is a 100% chance the conditions will persist through the Northern Hemisphere winter.

Sea surface temperatures in the Pacific region that the agency monitors were 4.0 degrees Celsius above normal — the highest since records began in 1949 and above the previous peak of 3.7 degrees Celsius set in December 1997.

The agency’s bulletin was published on 8 October 2026, and arrived a day after the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said El Niño is likely to become the most intense ever recorded. The climate pattern is already disrupting harvests and economies across several continents.

The record follows a steady rise:

  • In August, Japan recorded a 3.4-degree-Celsius anomaly in its NINO.3 monitoring region, surpassing the August record of 3.0 degrees Celsius from 1997. At the time, the agency expected temperatures to continue climbing into winter.
  • In September, Britain’s Met Office said the event had already surpassed previous records, with several weeks remaining before its expected peak.

In its latest Global Seasonal Climate Update, released 7 October 2026, the WMO had said there is a near-100% chance El Niño will last through February 2027, with a peak expected around December. For October through December, it forecasts that the anomaly in the Niño 3.4 region will reach about 3.7 degrees Celsius above normal. That would exceed the region’s record of 2.6 degrees Celsius, set in late 2015 and early 2016. The Niño 3.4 region overlaps with Japan’s Niño 3 zone but lies to its west.

Bloomberg has reported that the event is disrupting major economic regions months before it peaks, producing extreme heat and unusually dry or wet conditions.

  • El Niño has contributed to India’s weakest monsoon in more than a decade and worsened wildfires in Indonesia, whose smoke has reached Singapore and Malaysia.
  • The phenomenon has also threatened sugar and coffee production in Brazil. Economists have warned that this “super” El Niño could raise global food prices in a shock lasting until 2028.
  • The WMO expects drier-than-normal conditions across the Indian subcontinent, southern Central America and northwestern South America. It expects wetter weather in the Greater Horn of Africa, parts of East Asia and southeastern South America.
  • The event could also raise global temperatures. Several record-hot years — including 1998, 2016, 2023 and 2024 — had followed major El Niño events or occurred alongside them.

Note that El Niño does not add heat to the planet; instead, it releases heat already stored in the ocean.