FORECASTS issued by the United Nations (UN)’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have strengthened warnings that climate scientists have been making for months: Prepare Now For Super El Niño — WMO
American climate scientist Dr. Daniel Swain said a super El Niño generally refers to Niño-3.4 sea-surface temperature anomalies of about 2°C above normal, a scale of warming that reorganizes atmospheric circulation and amplifies weather extremes worldwide.
Agencies and operational forecasting centers, though, do not use ‘super’ as an official category but the phrase is media and scientific shorthand and should be defined when used.
Still, this planetwide reconfiguration explains why what happens in the Pacific matters so deeply for the Philippines and the wider Asia-Pacific region.
“All indicators are, at this point, that the next year is going to be a pretty wild year from a global climate perspective,” Dr. Swain, often described as the ‘Carl Sagan of Weather’, noted.
His observation is a sober reminder that the signals scientists monitor are not merely academic projections but early warnings of real impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods.
Asked what causes an El Niño and what makes one ‘super’, the climate expert replied that at its core, El Niño is an ocean-atmosphere feedback where normally, east-to-west trade winds push warm surface water into the western Pacific.
“When these winds weaken or reverse, sometimes in bursts known as westerly wind events, warm water moves eastward, generating downwelling Kelvin waves that deepen and warm the central and eastern tropical Pacific,” Swain expounded.
“Currently, forecasters are closely monitoring subsurface heat content and wind bursts because they are the physical mechanisms that sustain and amplify El Niño. The amount of subsurface heat and the timing of these wind events help determine whether a warm pulse develops into a modest event or a very strong episode,” he continued.
“In a warming world, higher baseline ocean temperatures and increased ocean heat content are changing the background conditions, increasing the likelihood that strong warm phases will produce even greater impacts,” he added.
WMO’s latest State of the Global Climate confirmed that the climate system is already operating near record warmth, meaning that any El Niño now develops on top of an already hotter baseline.
The implications for the Philippines and Southeast Asia are immediate and practical. El Niño reorganizes large-scale atmospheric circulation. The Walker circulation weakens, monsoon moisture may shift or arrive later than usual, and storm tracks change.
In all indications, a strong El Niño event will typically bring a delayed onset of the rainy season, prolonged dry spells, reduced river and reservoir inflows, and higher daytime temperatures on top of ongoing background warming.
Accordingly, this combination increases the likelihood of crop stress and failure, water shortages for households and agriculture, reduced hydropower generation and heightened wildfire risk. Heat stress will also pose direct threats to public health and labor productivity, especially among outdoor workers and communities with limited access to cooling or health care.