NOAA puts the odds of a record-strength El Nino at 69%

NOAA's number is a probability about rank. It says this event is more likely than not to outrank every El Nino in a record that begins in 1950, and that record is built from ocean temperature ^[1]. By the same figure there is roughly a 31% chance it falls short of the top spot ^[1].

El Nino is the warm phase of a Pacific cycle that recurs every few years and often shifts weather patterns worldwide ^[4]. Its effects differ from region to region ^[21]. Kareff Rafisura, who heads the Disaster Risk Reduction Division at the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, said the seas are already hotter than average and that global oceans set new temperature records in August ^[5].

Paul Teng of Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute said El Nino is only compounding the other problems already in view ^[10]. That compounding shows up in the Mekong, which flows through six countries and whose flows are already disrupted by mining and hydropower dam construction ^[16]. Zeb Hogan of the University of Nevada, Reno, who runs the Wonders of the Mekong research and conservation project, said, "It's one punch after another," and added, "If the river doesn't catch a break, we will reach a point where it's no longer going to sustain people in the way that it always has" ^[17][18]. Kongmeng Ly of the Mekong River Commission said lower flows are especially hard on communities that depend on predictable water levels for fishing and farming ^[19].

Phys.org reports that Asian governments have been drawing on financial reserves to soften the higher energy costs and scarce fertilizer supplies that followed the war in Iran, and that they have less capacity to cope with an El Nino forecast to peak in December ^[9][3]. The article does not put a figure on the drawdown or forecast a food price. The World Food Program's 49 million is a count of people expected in acute food insecurity by the end of 2027, with the worst effects anticipated in parts of Central America and southern Africa ^[6][7].

In Indonesia, wildfires are burning forests and peatlands and sending up plumes of toxic haze ^[12]. Erma Yulihastin of Indonesia's Research Center for Climate and Atmosphere said El Nino has only just begun its "super phase" ^[15]. At the reservoir supplying Jakarta, the ruins of one of 11 villages flooded when it was filled have come back above the water, and the city it serves holds 42 million people ^[13]. "I would have rather not moved. There were plenty of livelihood opportunities here," said Hussen, who uses only one name and ferries people across the receding reservoir ^[14].

Southeast Asia's wet season runs from about June to October, when rain refills reservoirs, cools overheated cities and supplies irrigation water ahead of the next planting ^[20]. El Nino is forecast to peak in December, after that window closes ^[2].