Super El Nino 2026 is coming: What is it, and why is India's monsoon at risk?

A Super El Nino is a rare, extreme version of the Pacific Ocean warming cycle, and scientists warn one may be forming right now. With India's monsoon already forecast to be below normal, here is what this climate event means and why it matters to every Indian.

In Short

• Super El Nino occurs when Pacific Ocean warms over 2 degrees Celsius.
• IMD officially forecasts monsoon at 92 per cent of Long Period Average.
• Indian Ocean Dipole remains neutral, offering India no early protection.

The world's oceans are running a fever, and it is about to get much worse. Sea surface temperatures are already close to all-time highs, inching closer to the 2024 record.

“It is a matter of days before we are back in record-breaking ocean SSTs again,” Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), told news agency AFP.

SSTs, or sea surface temperatures, simply refer to how warm the top layer of the ocean is.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service, which is the European Union’s official climate monitoring programme, confirmed that April 2026 sea surface temperatures were the second-highest ever measured.

It also reported that April was the third-hottest month globally on record, sitting 1.43 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial benchmark, which is the average temperature of the Earth between 1850 and 1900, before fossil fuels began warming the planet at scale.

Scientists say this ocean warming is not random. It is the early signature of an El Nino, and this one could be a Super El Nino.

WHAT EXACTLY IS A SUPER EL NINO?

To understand a Super El Nino, you first need to understand El Nino itself.

Every few years, the central and eastern Pacific Ocean warms above its normal temperature.

This warming disrupts the trade winds, which are the steady easterly winds that blow across the tropics and keep global weather patterns in balance.

When those winds weaken, heat builds up across the Pacific, and weather systems across the entire planet shift in response.

Some regions flood. Others dry out. Temperatures climb.

For an event to be called an El Nino, ocean temperatures only need to rise 0.5 degrees Celsius above the historical average.

A Super El Nino is a far more extreme version, one where the warming exceeds 2 degrees Celsius. Think of the difference between a mild fever and a dangerously high one. The body looks the same from the outside, but the consequences are in a completely different league.

Only three Super El Nino events have been recorded in modern history: 1982 to 1983, 1997 to 1998, and 2015 to 2016.

Each one triggered droughts, floods, wildfires, and food crises across multiple continents.

The 2015 to 2016 event alone pushed India into widespread drought conditions, with actual monsoon rainfall recording just 86 per cent of the historical average.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which is the United Nations body that monitors global weather, confirmed last month that El Nino conditions could develop as early as May to July 2026.

Several major forecast models, including those from the ECMWF in Europe and Noaa, which is America's primary ocean and weather agency, are now aligned on a trajectory that could push this event into Super El Nino territory.

Zeke Hausfather, a scientist at Berkeley Earth, an independent climate research organisation, has written that a strong El Nino could significantly raise the chances of 2027 becoming the hottest year ever recorded.

Burgess echoed this, noting that El Nino's impact on global temperatures typically arrives the year after it peaks. "We’re likely to see 2027 exceed 2024 for the warmest year on record," she said.

WILL INDIA'S MONSOON BE HIT?

For India, the timing of this event is deeply concerning. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) officially forecast on April 13, 2026 that the southwest monsoon, which delivers over 70 per cent of India's annual rainfall and is the lifeline of hundreds of millions of farmers, is likely to be below normal this year.

Rainfall is projected at just 92 per cent of the Long Period Average, or LPA. The LPA is the benchmark figure calculated by averaging 50 years of historical rainfall data, from 1971 to 2020, and works out to approximately 87 centimetres.

A reading of 92 per cent means drier fields, stressed crops, and a difficult kharif season, which is the summer crop season that depends almost entirely on monsoon rainfall.

IMD's forecast maps show that most of India, barring the extreme north, extreme west, the northeast, and parts of the southern peninsula, faces a genuine rainfall deficit this season.

The chances of a severely deficient monsoon, meaning rainfall below 90 per cent of the LPA, stand at 35 per cent. That is more than double the historical long-term probability of 16 per cent.

IS THERE ANY GOOD NEWS FOR INDIA?

There is one potential buffer: the Indian Ocean Dipole, or IOD.

The IOD measures the temperature difference between the western and eastern halves of the Indian Ocean.

When the western side is warmer, scientists call it a positive IOD, and it tends to push extra moisture towards India, sometimes offsetting El Nino's drying influence.

This is precisely what happened in 1997, when a powerful positive IOD neutralised a Super El Nino and saved India from drought.

However, IMD reports that the IOD is currently in a neutral state, meaning neither side of the Indian Ocean is significantly warmer than the other.

A positive phase is only expected towards the tail end of the monsoon season, arriving too late to meaningfully protect July and August, which are the two months that matter most for Indian agriculture.

As Burgess put it simply: "We just keep seeing extremes. Every month we have more data that climate change is creating these extreme events."

For India, 2026 may be one such extreme.

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