Super El Nino sets a Pacific heat record: 2026 could be the hottest year ever, says Copernicus

El Nino hits an all-time high

El Nino set an all-time temperature record in the Pacific in September, and it could make 2026 the hottest year on record, the director of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Monday 12 October, AFP reported via ARY News.

Sea surface temperatures in Nino3.4, the patch of the central Pacific that forecasters watch to measure El Nino, reached 29.70C, above the peaks of the strong El Nino events of 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16. The record has fallen before this El Nino's expected peak later in the year.

The numbers

• 29.70C: Nino3.4 sea temperature in September, an all-time high.
• 21.05C: global average sea surface temperature in September, a record for the month (the previous high was 20.92C in September 2023).
• 16.27C: average global surface air temperature in September, the second hottest September on record.
• 1.63C: how much warmer September was than the 1850-1900 average. It was the second month in a row above 1.5C.

Is it the strongest El Nino ever?

Not yet, by Copernicus' own measure. Director Carlo Buontempo called this El Nino, which emerged in June, "very exceptional", but said it is too early to call it the strongest ever. Because the oceans are warmer overall, older and newer events are hard to compare, so Copernicus now uses an index that adjusts for that warming, and on that index the current event is not yet stronger than past ones. Japan's weather agency said on Friday that El Nino had reached its "strongest intensity on record" on its own scale.

Buontempo said that if past patterns repeat, the world "may have a record-breaking 2026, followed by a record-breaking 2027", because El Nino usually lifts global temperatures most in the year after its peak. He added that El Nino is not the root cause: the long-term rise comes from greenhouse gas emissions.

What El Nino is

El Nino is the warm phase of a natural cycle in the tropical Pacific that returns every two to seven years and lasts about nine to 12 months. It shifts weather patterns around the world, raising the risk of drought in some regions and floods in others, on top of man-made warming.

What it means for Pakistan

Pakistan has lived through deadly heatwaves and floods in recent years, so a record-warm world matters here too. The Pakistan Meteorological Department issues its own seasonal outlooks, and those, not global averages, decide local advisories. Hotter months also mean heavier air-conditioner use: our AC running cost calculator shows what that adds to a power bill.