2026 ENSO Updates

[Kingarabian]

Will be interesting to see if this El Nino event will bring things back to normal especially if the PDO continues to warm and the SOI cooperates. Do we see a below 10 NS Atlantic hurricane season and hyperactive WPAC and EPAC seasons? Will the CPAC behave like 2014-2018?

[cycloneye]

2026-02 -0.2696 PDO

JMA had the PDO warming up to -0.26 the warmest in nearly 6 years by their measures.

Any link to JMA PDO data?

[Kingarabian]

2026-02 -0.2696 PDO

JMA had the PDO warming up to -0.26 the warmest in nearly 6 years by their measures.

Any link to JMA PDO data?

https://www.data.jma.go.jp/kaiyou/data/ ... do/pdo.txt

[cycloneye]

The new RONI data for JFM is down to-0.7C.



https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/ ... atest-data

[cycloneye]

The Euro is not holding back. The mean is at +2.5C

[DorkyMcDorkface]

The Euro is not holding back. The mean is at +2.5C

https://i.imgur.com/lUOUod1.png

Do keep in mind the Euro has a known warm bias when it comes to ENSO. Not saying a Super Niño isn't in the cards but it would not surprise me if it's being too bullish on that front

[dexterlabio]

No way this event couldn't top 2023. I remember talks about that year lacking significant WWB events to drive El Niño to strong threshold, yet it happened.

[Kingarabian]

No way this event couldn't top 2023. I remember talks about that year lacking significant WWB events to drive El Niño to strong threshold, yet it happened.

2023 El Nino event was pretty odd tbh. Still dont know what to make of it till this day.

This year's event is behaving much more traditionally so far.

[Ntxw]

No way this event couldn't top 2023. I remember talks about that year lacking significant WWB events to drive El Niño to strong threshold, yet it happened.

2023 El Nino event was pretty odd tbh. Still dont know what to make of it till this day.

This year's event is behaving much more traditionally so far.

Some posts back I did a forcing reanalysis about 2023-2024. The walker circulation didn't advance like you typically would think despite actual ocean temps (not anomaly) being warm (up there with the strong El Nino's)., So the atmospheric response was mixed with dual forcing. Thus the RONI makes sense to compensate since it takes into consideration other anomalous areas of the tropics. Definitely odd year.

[LarryWx]

The Euro is not holding back. The mean is at +2.5C

https://i.imgur.com/lUOUod1.png

Do keep in mind the Euro has a known warm bias when it comes to ENSO. Not saying a Super Niño isn't in the cards but it would not surprise me if it's being too bullish on that front

Indeed, the Euro has a notable warm bias. I’ve already researched this in detail. Incorporating that with some other things, this is my assessment of the Euro April ONI prog:

1. The April run comes in a bit stronger for ONI than the Mar run for the same months compared. For example, the Mar run had Sep at ~+2.1 vs the Apr run having Sep at ~+2.25. So, that’s clearly a bullish trend since the prior run for a stronger ONI.

2. RONI is still ~0.5 cooler than ONI. So, ~0.5 still needs to be subtracted off of the Euro output to approximate its implied RONI prog.

3. It’s important to still keep in mind (as said by Dorky) a longterm warm bias of the Euro ONI progs based on the avg of ~20 years of progs though those that verify as El Niño have averaged a lower warm bias.

Examples:

-the April ‘17 run progged moderate El Niño (+1.1) for ASO vs it verifying way down at -0.3 for ONI, a whopping +1.4 miss. That’s an extreme, of course, but one doesn’t find misses anywhere near that same magnitude the other way.
In addition, the April ‘14 run had ASO up at +1.5 vs verification of only +0.3, another big miss of +1.2.
Furthermore, the April ‘12 run had ASO up at +1.0 vs verification of only +0.4 for a +0.6 miss.

Some more recent April run ASO ONI misses have also been large to the too warm side:

-2025: ASO prog of +0.4 vs actual of -0.4 for miss of +0.8

-2022: ASO prog of -0.3 vs actual of -1.0 for miss of +0.7

-2021: ASO prog of 0 vs actual of -0.6 for a miss of +0.6

-2020: ASO prog of -0.1 vs actual of -0.9 for a miss of +0.8

So, based on the -0.5 RONI adj. and the notable Euro warm bias, the actual RONI peak could easily verify as only a moderate peak. My current wild guess is for low to middle end strong RONI peak. I’ll update this periodically as we get closer. This doesn’t mean that even a superstrong RONI can’t occur even in my mind being that it’s still very early.

[cycloneye]

Welcome back LarryWx to the ENSO discussion as you are one of the most savvy person doing analysis about ENSO. By the way Larry, finnally after talking so much about RONI, NOAA is now with it.

[Iceresistance]

This is possibly why we're facing another extreme WWB event, that is one insane MJO

https://s13.gifyu.com/images/bqMtB.png


https://s13.gifyu.com/images/bqMtO.png

Note the above image is showing the extreme WWB event being forecasted

[cycloneye]

CPC weekly update of 4/6/26 has niño 3.4 at -0.2C. The next big update from them will be next thursday when they may declare ENSO neutral.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/ ... ts-web.pdf

[cycloneye]

 https://x.com/BenNollWeather/status/2041152953021816949

[WeatherBoy2000]

 https://x.com/PaulRoundy1/status/2041157712814235653



Interestingly super el ninos are such powerful atmospheric events that they can alter the earth's climate for years after. For example, some areas may enter long term droughts while other areas enter longterm wet periods. If we do see a super el nino, will there be any noticeable changes in TC activity as well?

[Ntxw]

 https://x.com/PaulRoundy1/status/2041157712814235653



Interestingly super el ninos are such powerful atmospheric events that they can alter the earth's climate for years after. For example, some areas may enter long term droughts while other areas enter longterm wet periods. If we do see a super el nino, will there be any noticeable changes in TC activity as well?

Another such example is the 2015-16 Super El Nino. The Indo-Pacific, especially in the MC region, saw pretty much unabated warming in the 10+ years since after this El Nino, with 3 El Ninos that struggled to couple. The Atlantic seasons have been consistently beating odds El Nino or La Nina during this period, probably due to some influence with the forcing associated with warming and sustainability of the Indo-Pac warm pool remaining to the west regardless of ENSO.

The walker circulation is the harder part to forecast that's tied to ENSO and warm pools.

[cycloneye]

Constructing El Niño.

[DorkyMcDorkface]

April NMME plume:

[cycloneye]

Super El NIño is what the April NMME has.

[LarryWx]

Super El NIño is what the April NMME has.

https://i.imgur.com/z9Ncp8x.jpeg

Thanks, Luis. NMME is based on ONI rather than RONI since major non-BoM global models appear to still be. So, I’d subtract ~0.5 from these. Even so, NMME is obviously still calling for a strong Nino.