An 'unprecedented' El Niño event forecast to be the largest since the 19th century is set to bring wetter and stormier conditions to the UK this autumn and winter, while threatening to disrupt the food supply chain and push up food prices, experts have warned.
El Niño is officially declared when sea temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean climb 0.5C above the long-term average, influencing worldwide rainfall patterns and temperatures, with oceanic conditions during such an event typically running between 1C and 2C above the norm. However, the natural warming of sea temperatures in the region is projected to exceed 3C in the months ahead, making this year's occurrence "the largest since the 19th century", according to the Met Office.
Forecast for wetter and stormier UK conditions
The phenomenon creates an elevated risk of drought across the tropics, southern Africa, and north-east Australia, while north-western Europe – the UK included – faces the prospect of wetter and more turbulent conditions throughout the forthcoming autumn and early winter, the forecaster revealed. As global temperatures are driven upward by El Niño, compounding the warming already attributed to human-made climate change, 2027 is predicted to become the hottest year ever recorded worldwide.
Professor Adam Scaife, head of long range forecasting at the Met Office, stated: "We should be clear that this is an unprecedented event". He added: "I have never seen an El Nino signal this intense in our forecasts."
Experts warn of 'one hell of a ride'
Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University, cautioned that while El Niño is a naturally occurring phenomenon that emerges every two to seven years, it is now taking place in a "climate already loaded towards extreme heat", driven by climate change resulting from fossil fuel combustion. She also suggested that Britain could experience weather events comparable to Storm Desmond, which struck in late 2015 during the previous intense El Niño episode, causing massive flooding.
Prof Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical hazards, University College London, stated that Met Office projections alongside other scientific predictions "suggest that the world is in for one hell of a ride". "The astonishing and unprecedented amount of heat building across the eastern Pacific Ocean is all but certain to make this the most powerful El Nino in living memory – possibly even the biggest in several centuries," he said.
Impact on food prices and harvests
The injection of such substantial warmth into the atmosphere from the heated ocean waters could push global temperatures to reach or potentially surpass 1.7C above pre-industrial levels, he warned. He continued: "The knock-on impacts on global weather patterns are also expected to be huge – bringing drought and wildfire conditions to the Amazon and parts of Australia, torrential rainfall and floods to California, and a reduced South Asian monsoon."
While it remains impossible to confirm whether climate change is intensifying El Niño events, "it would be a surprise if the superposition of a much hotter eastern Pacific Ocean on top of already higher global temperatures, didn't result in the development of more extreme El Ninos," he said.
The caution follows a summer across much of the UK marked by droughts and heatwaves, which is on course to become the hottest on record and deliver the worst harvest in records stretching back decades, as Britain confronts increasingly severe extreme weather driven by climate change. While substantial rainfall is required to avert another drought in the UK next summer, there are fears that excessively wet conditions could devastate harvests, as they did during the last El Niño in 2023 and 2024.
Consumers face rising prices
Chris Jaccarini, senior economist at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) think tank, highlighted the exceptionally wet winter of 2023-2024 – which scientific analysis demonstrated was worsened by climate change – and which severely affected wheat, milk and beef production, driving food prices upwards. "In terms of UK production, El Nino is turbocharging worsening impacts that are already being driven by human-caused climate change," he said.
He further cautioned that consumers faced vulnerabilities beyond domestic production, with a quarter of the nation's food by value, and roughly a third by volume, sourced from continents including Asia, Africa and the Americas, which would be far more severely affected by El Niño. Market values of goods such as coffee, which has been adversely affected by a combination of climate change and El Niño in recent years, were already climbing in anticipation that this year's event would deal a blow to production, he noted.
He went on to say: "If we are to address these growing risks, what we need to do is move towards net zero and bring our climate into balance, so we stop these worsening extremes," while also highlighting the necessity of supporting farmers worldwide in adapting to the ever-shifting climate.
John Marsham, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Leeds, commented: "The science is clear that this will affect UK weather, but it is also vital that people understand that the UK is also affected indirectly by El Nino. For example, an El Nino of this magnitude will affect global food production and push up UK food prices, which are already being increased by this summer's heatwaves and droughts, which themselves were fuelled by the climate crisis."
"These forecasts for 2026 and 2027 also reveal the world we must prepare for in the coming years, as such extremes driven by the climate crisis will only get worse until we have phased out fossil fuels," he added.
