It’s likely that 2026 will be the hottest year on record, say experts
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The brutal heat and drenching rains brought by El Nino are set to exacerbate the economic pain caused by the Iran war.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- A powerful El Nino is raising the chances that 2026 will be the hottest year on record, with 2027 expected to break the record as well, according to Berkeley Earth.
- El Nino causes extreme weather, drying some regions like Africa and India, while increasing rainfall in others like the southern US, with sea temperatures rising unusually high.
- The intense heat in 2026 is worsened by climate change, with severe impacts such as wildfires, disrupted fishing, and economic hardship in many countries, especially emerging markets.
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BERKELEY, California – An unusually powerful El Nino is raising the odds that 2026 will surpass 2024 as the world’s hottest year on record, and regardless, 2027 is expected to set a new high, according to a monthly analysis of global weather data by Berkeley Earth, a non-profit research group.
“We are likely to see something quite dramatic in the next year or so,” Robert Rohde, chief scientist at Berkeley Earth, said on Aug 13.
“It will be giving us weather conditions that we would normally expect to be a decade or more away. It’s going to be a big deal.”
El Nino, a months-long recurring weather phase, brings powerful consequences for the globe – drying out some regions, such as western and southern Africa, Australia and India, while potentially raising rainfall in others, such as the southern US.
Scientists gauge the strength of an El Nino from sea-surface temperatures in a specific region of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
Projections suggest temperatures will rise an extraordinary 4 deg C above normal in that patch of ocean, compared with 2.75 deg C for the El Nino of 2015 to 2016.
The crushing heat in late spring and early summer in 2026 probably came too early for El Nino to have made it worse.
This El Nino began in June and is coming on so strong that the odds of 2026 becoming the hottest year have jumped from 12 per cent in July to 69 per cent in August, according to Berkeley Earth.
In July, heatwaves fuelled destructive wildfires in France and Spain, and a heat dome baked parts of the US.
It was the hottest or second-hottest July ever recorded, according to the major climate datasets.
In the contiguous US, the month’s average high temperature broke a record set 90 years ago, at the peak of the Dust Bowl.
So much of the world is sweltering that it is easier to name the place that is not: “It’s been a very, very cold Antarctic winter,” Rohde said.
In many countries, especially emerging markets, the brutal heat and drenching rains brought by El Nino are set to exacerbate the economic pain caused by the Iran war.
For example, warming seas have halted anchovy fishing in Peru.
Scientists heavily caveat annual temperature rankings, emphasising that climate change occurs over decades and El Nino can have a strong influence on a single month or year.
But the warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution is always there and increasing.
“El Nino is a giant hammer that the climate gets hit with,” said Berkeley Earth scientist Zeke Hausfather, “so it is going to scramble a lot of different things”. BLOOMBERG
