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The forecast peak of 3.6C sits well past the line where the WMO's own scale stops resolving anything, and because ocean heat vents slowly, the year that inherits the temperature is 2027 rather than 2026.
The Scientist · Science desk
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The index does less work than any other number here, which is a shame, because it is the one that will travel. The WMO's four-step scale tops out at "very strong," and its climate prediction chief, Wilfran Moufouma-Okia, said that band begins at a sea surface anomaly above 2C [7]. An ensemble mean peak of 3.6C therefore sits 1.6C beyond the point where the classification stops distinguishing between events [21], and Moufouma-Okia said as much: the top category is open, known where it starts and not where it ends [8]. Reaching that mean requires another 1.0C to 1.4C on top of the mid-August weekly readings [22], after a rise of 0.7C to 1.1C on the May-to-July average [26]. The fuel is in place. Subsurface temperatures in some areas ran more than 8C above average during July and early August, which WMO chief Celeste Saulo described as a reservoir of warm water that will feed the event's intensity [12].
The reason a 2026 event is a 2027 planning problem is the ocean's release rate. Stored heat vents into the atmosphere slowly, which pushes global temperatures up in the year after an El Nino develops [5], and the WMO expects this one's ripple effects to run well into 2027 even though the peak arrives late this year [4]. The previous cycle is the reference case: the 2023-24 event contributed to 2024 being the warmest year on record, and Saulo said we should not be surprised if that record is broken [6].
On attribution, the agency is careful and so should anyone quoting it be. El Nino is naturally occurring and is not caused by climate change [17]. The 3.6 is a large oscillation layered onto a warmed baseline, not a climate signal in itself, and scientists expect it to exacerbate the heat of a planet already warming from fossil fuel burning [17]. The trend supplies the floor and the oscillation supplies the excursion, which is why annual records tend to fall in the years that follow strong events.
Regional rainfall impacts are what the 3.6 figure leaves out. Moufouma-Okia's caution that peak strength is not an indicator of impact severity [13] is the operationally useful sentence of the briefing, and it is considerably less quotable than UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres saying the world is in the "danger zone of extreme weather" [25]. What the forecast does offer at regional resolution is thin by comparison: for September to November, an increased likelihood of above-normal temperatures across almost all land areas [14], plus a list of exposed sectors including agriculture, fisheries, health, energy and water [15]. The WMO gave the 3.6 as a single average figure, without an accompanying uncertainty range.
So a view, with its conditions. If I were setting a 2027 baseline for weather-exposed operations, I would assume a hotter and more disrupted year than 2026 with wider regional variance, and I would not multiply any site-level exposure by the Pacific anomaly, because the two are not on the same scale. The one place the numbers do meet an operational figure is the IOM appeal: $110 million to protect 4.9 million people [18] works out to roughly $22 a head [23], which is the price of acting before the peak rather than the cost of repairing after it.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
The World Meteorological Organization warned Thursday that El Nino is forecast to be the strongest since comparable records began four decades ago, with the event set to become "very strong" in the months ahead.
The WMO said El Nino is nearly certain to persist through February.
WMO chief Celeste Saulo told reporters in Geneva: "If this trajectory continues, it may be stronger than anything since our monitoring began."
The average forecast points toward an anomaly peaking at 3.6C, well above the last two very strong El Ninos in 1997-98 and 2015-16.
Saulo urged disaster management authorities and climate-sensitive sectors including agriculture, fisheries, health, energy and water to prepare.
The WMO said El Nino "is firmly established and will intensify into a very strong event in the coming months, with big impacts on rainfall and temperature patterns and associated risks of floods, drought and extreme heat."
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1 article · September 3, 2026
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One briefing, every number
The measurements are the strong part: the index at 1.5C from May to July, weekly values of 2.2C to 2.6C, subsurface water above 8C, a category boundary at 2C. Those are checkable quantities attributed to named WMO officials. The load the story actually rests on is the 3.6C forecast peak, and that arrives as an unattributed 'average forecast' with no ensemble, no spread and no independent forecaster anywhere in the copy. Everything reaches us through a single AFP dispatch on a single Geneva press conference.
An appeal, not yet a response
Concrete institutional action here comes to exactly one item: the IOM asking for $110 million to cover 4.9 million people. An appeal is a request, and the reporting says nothing about pledges, disbursements or any government or utility changing a plan in response. Saulo's list of sectors that should prepare is an instruction, not evidence that anyone has.
Superlative running ahead of the thermometer
The headline says strongest in decades; the arithmetic says the Pacific must warm another 1.0C to 1.4C above its mid-August readings before the 3.6C forecast is realised, and Saulo's own phrasing is conditional - 'if this trajectory continues'. The gap widens when Guterres's 'danger zone' framing is read against Moufouma-Okia's flat statement, further down the same page, that peak strength does not indicate impact severity. Credit where due: the caveats are all present in the copy rather than buried, which keeps the overshoot modest.
UN forecast and UN appeal, same Thursday
Two arms of the same institution share the news cycle: the WMO issues the forecast and the IOM asks for $110 million on the same day, and the secretary-general supplies the quotable line about El Nino being supersized. None of that makes the physics wrong - the index readings stand on their own - but the packaging serves a funding and attention objective, and AFP quotes nobody outside the UN system who might price the forecast differently.
Solid sourcing, single channel
What holds this up is that the officials are named, on the record and speaking to their own agency's data, and the internal arithmetic is consistent. What limits it is that there is one publisher, one wire, one briefing and no second forecast to compare against - so a revision at the next WMO update would leave nothing here standing independently.