“2023 and 2024 were fairly bad years too, due to El Nino

This year’s El Niño is on track to become the most powerful in over a century, with Pacific waters expected to heat up more than 3°C above normal — a level that would dwarf every El Niño event in the modern climate record and could push 2027 past 2024 as the hottest year ever recorded globally, Britain’s Met Office said on Friday.

In India, where El Niño is already depressing the monsoon, the implications stretch across two crop seasons, with the current one already facing uncertainty with the rains having stalled. The 2015-16 El Niño — the current record-holder — peaked at a roughly 3°C anomaly. The Climate Brink dashboard, which aggregates forecast models using data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows the event on course to peak at a 3.9°C anomaly this November — well above the 2015 benchmark. Pacific sea-surface temperatures are currently running about 2.6°C above the rolling 30-year average.

“We are expecting the biggest El Nino for over a century, peaking at something over three degrees — that is unheard of in modern climate records,” said Adam Scaife, head of long-range forecasting at the Met Office, telling the BBC that even a 2°C rise is considered a “really big event.

Raghu Murtugudde, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland and visiting professor at the Kotak School of Sustainability, IIT-Kanpur , said the impact on Indian agriculture could extend through both this year’s Rabi season and into 2027. In 2027, for India, a lot will depend on how the monsoon performs, but spring next year may also bring a lot of heatwaves , which will again impact crops,” he said. “2023 and 2024 were fairly bad years too, due to El Nino.

This year too, for India, the Rabi output may suffer and the government is already taking safeguards, like the action on edible oil and sugar .