TORONTO — Some are calling it the Godzilla of El Ninos. David Phillips has heard the other names too. “Supercharged. Turbocharged. My gosh, it’s captured attention,” says the longtime climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. For months experts have been warning about the possibility the current El Niño could be a record breaker. It’s now looking even more likely, after the UN’s weather agency forecast a nearly 100 per cent chance it will hang around until at least February, the first time it’s ever issued so unequivocal an El Niño forecast. “If this trajectory continues, it may be stronger than anything since our monitoring began,” said World Meteorological Organization secretary-general Celeste Saulo at a press conference in Geneva on Thursday. “So literally off the charts we have used for the past four decades.” Many Canadians will be familiar with El Niños, which can be associated with milder than usual winters in Canada. They’ve been known to wreak havoc in some parts of the world including droughts in some countries and torrential rain in others. Weeklong rains blamed on El Niño killed at least 10 people in Chile in July. In Central America, drought has prompted emergency declarations in Honduras, El Salvador and Panama. “It certainly can cause problems globally. Make storms stormier. It affects food supplies,” says Phillips. He noted the Panama Canal is now cutting back on the number of ships that can pass through because of a lack of precipitation, with rain a source of the water used in the canal. An El Niño is a complex weather pattern that happens every two to seven years and is closely associated with a warming of the tropical waters of the eastern Pacific. The current one began emerging in late spring and is continuing to build at a time of already unprecedented ocean warmth globally with the average temperature hitting a record high in August. “This is a supercharged El Niño, but the backdrop for it is occurring when the oceans have never been warmer,” says Phillips. U.S. forecasters put the odds at roughly 70 per cent that the El Nino will exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950. “It may peak in November, December,” said Phillips. “But it still will be with us right through till next spring, affecting our weather.” Winter ‘open and tame’ For Canadians, Phillips said the most noticeable effect will likely be a milder winter dominated by Pacific rather than Arctic air. “This one is going to be generally a kind of a soft and open and tame kind of winter,” predicted Phillips. He says it could mean savings on home heating bills — and disappointment for skiers, who may find themselves on the sidelines more than they’d like. “We’re going to see less snow, more rain in the West, and that will lead to problems in the springtime: earlier forest fires, more drought,” Phillips said. Prairie farmers, who’ve seen lots of precipitation this year, could also be looking at dry conditions come spring according to Phillips. “They could be into a drought situation because there’s going to be less snow, less irrigation water, less precipitation,” he said. “Generally there are going to be winners and losers, as there are with every winter.” One likely winner: Atlantic Canada, because an El Niño tends to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. Phillips expects to see fewer such storms this fall. “It’s not going to be zero, but they’re going to be very few — fewer than they normally have been,” he said. Record heat likely in 2027 Scientists note the El Niño in 2023-24 helped make 2024 the hottest year on record, and WMO officials said Thursday that 2027 has the potential to break it. Phillips has little doubt. “There’s no doubt in everybody’s mind that in 2027, after El Niño dies away, the residual heat will still be warming the air and the oceans,” he said. “When they stick that thermometer in to find out what the temperature is, they’ll say, ‘Eureka, 2027 was the warmest year on record globally,’ both in the atmosphere and in the oceans.” “Climatologists might be having fun tracking it, but the impacts are very serious for everybody.”
