El Niño and its impact on global temperature (1950 to 2026)
Data source: ESA CCI SST, NASA GISTEMP, NOAA RONI. Visualization: © Même Terre.
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As I mentally prepare for the summer heat, my friend informed me that a strong El Niño is coming. News reports that an El Niño event is expected to develop by mid-2026, potentially affecting global temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide. El Nino, it's about sea surface temperature in one region of Pacific Ocean, right? What does it do to global temperature — especially temperature over land? With these questions in mind, we created a video using historical datasets to explore El Nino and global temperature.
El Niño and La Niña are opposite phases of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). El Niño is characterized by unusually warm sea surface temperature in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, and tends to temporarily boost global average temperatures by releasing heat from the tropical Pacific into the atmosphere. La Niña often does the opposite. They are among the most powerful climate patterns on Earth. These events reshape weather patterns around the world, influencing rainfall, drought, and extreme weather across many regions. For example, 2024 became the hottest year on record due to the combination of the powerful 2023-2024 El Niño and human-induced climate change. To learn more about El Nino, see the Nasa website.
Also note that large volcanic eruptions can temporarily cool the planet. Events such as Agung (1963), El Chichón (1982), and Pinatubo (1991) injected large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere, reflecting sunlight back into space and reducing global temperatures for the following one to a few years.
Notes on terminology
- Sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly: The deviation between observed sea surface temperature and a long-term climatological average (here defined as 1981 – 2009).
- Global average temperature anomaly: The deviation of the global average surface temperature from a reference baseline (here defined as 1880 – 1919).
- Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI): RONI is calculated as the 3-month running mean of SST anomalies in the Niño 3.4 region (170° W – 120° W, 5° S – 5° N), minus the average SST anomaly over the broader tropical belt (20° S – 20° N).