The Godzilla Event: What Super El Niño Is, Why 2026 Is Different, and What the World Should Brace For

On 11 June 2026, NOAA officially declared El Niño conditions underway in the tropical Pacific. The agency gave a 63% probability that this event would rank among the largest in the historical record going back to 1950. Climate scientists are calling it Godzilla. The nickname is not entirely hyperbole.

By TurkishBritish Magazine  |  Summer 2026

Every few years, the Pacific Ocean does something that reshapes weather patterns across the entire planet. The sea surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific warms unusually — sometimes by one degree Celsius, sometimes by two, occasionally by more — and the consequences radiate outward: droughts in one region, floods in another, record heat in a third, collapsing fisheries in a fourth.

This phenomenon is called El Niño, named by Peruvian fishermen in the 16th century for the Christ Child, because the warming they noticed tended to arrive around Christmas. It was not until the 20th century that scientists understood the full mechanism: the Bjerknes feedback, named for the Norwegian meteorologist Jacob Bjerknes, which describes how weakening trade winds allow warm Pacific water to drift east, which weakens the winds further, which allows more warming, in a self-reinforcing cycle that eventually runs its course and reverses.

What scientists have been watching, with increasing urgency, through spring and summer 2026 is not an ordinary El Niño. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, which declared conditions officially underway on 11 June, estimated a 63% likelihood that this event would rank among the strongest ever recorded since systematic observation began in 1950. Professor Paul Roundy of the State University of New York wrote in April that there was “real potential for the strongest El Niño event in 140 years.” The last event of that scale — the 1877–1878 El Niño — triggered a global famine estimated to have killed more than 50 million people.

What Makes This a ‘Super’ El Niño

“Super El Niño” is not a technical term used by the Met Office or NOAA. It has been adopted by scientists and journalists to describe events where sea surface temperature anomalies in the central tropical Pacific exceed two degrees Celsius above normal. This threshold has only been crossed a handful of times since 1950 — most recently in 2015–2016, an event that drove 2016 to become, at the time, the hottest year in the historical record.

The UK Met Office stated in April 2026 that “there is growing confidence that this event could sit at the upper end of the historical range” and that it “could be the strongest El Niño event so far this century.” The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts put the probability of a super El Niño developing at 100% by November. These are extraordinary statements from institutions not typically given to hyperbole.

What distinguishes a super event from an ordinary El Niño is primarily the magnitude of the warming in the Pacific, and the consequent scale of disruption to atmospheric circulation patterns. During the 2015–2016 event, severe drought hit Ethiopia, Puerto Rico faced water supply shortages, and the central-north Pacific experienced one of its most destructive hurricane seasons on record. Coral bleaching affected an estimated 99% of reef systems globally. The economic damage — measured in disrupted agriculture, infrastructure losses, and public health costs — ran into hundreds of billions of dollars.

The 2026 event has not yet peaked. According to NOAA, El Niño events typically build through the northern hemisphere summer and autumn, with their strongest influence felt between November and February. The most severe weather consequences for many regions will therefore extend into 2027.

El Niño and Climate Change: The Amplification Problem

One of the most important and contested questions in contemporary climate science is how human-caused warming interacts with the ENSO cycle. The scientific consensus, as summarised in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, is carefully worded: “It is very likely that the precipitation variance related to El Niño–Southern Oscillation will increase” in the long term, and that “rainfall variability related to changes in the strength and spatial extent of ENSO teleconnections will lead to significant changes at regional scale.”

More recent scholarship, published since approximately 2019, has found that climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme El Niño events — a finding that had previously been contested. A large ensemble experiment using multiple climate models found approximately double the likelihood of strong eastern Pacific El Niño events in the 1961–2020 period compared to pre-industrial conditions.

The interaction works in both directions. When El Niño occurs, it increases the likelihood of record-high global average temperatures in the following year. If the 2026 event reaches the intensity currently forecast, it could push global temperatures temporarily above the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold set out in the Paris Agreement. Samantha Burgess, Strategic Climate Leader at the Copernicus Climate Change Service, put it plainly: “The climate system is continuing to accumulate heat. The result is more severe heatwaves, persistently warm oceans, and growing risks for people, ecosystems and infrastructure across the world.”

This does not mean the 1.5 degrees limit will have been permanently exceeded — a temporary breach during an El Niño year is different in character from a permanent shift in the baseline. But it is, as Burgess implied, a clear signal of how much headroom remains.

The Historical Precedents: What Strong El Niños Have Done

The 1982–1983 El Niño remains the event that galvanised modern scientific interest. It produced severe flooding in Ecuador and Peru, drought and bushfires in Australia, and disrupted fisheries across the Pacific. The 1997–1998 event was stronger, and triggered the first large-scale global coral bleaching event. In 2015–2016, what scientists called “Godzilla” drove global temperatures to what was then a record high, caused food insecurity for an estimated 60 million people globally through drought impacts in Africa and South Asia, and fuelled exceptional bushfire seasons in South-East Asia.

The economic literature on El Niño is unambiguous about aggregate damage. The IMF has traced significant GDP impacts: Indonesia faces approximately 1% decline in real growth during a strong event; South Africa around 0.7%; the effects on agricultural commodity prices and food security in developing countries dependent on rain-fed agriculture are consistently negative.

What COP31 Must Now Grapple With

The emergence of a potential super El Niño in the year that Turkey hosts COP31 is not incidental. Climate summits that arrive in the shadow of extreme weather events tend to generate more political urgency than those held in relatively benign years — but they also arrive with populations, supply chains, and governments already under stress from immediate crises.

COP31 will convene in Antalya in November 2026, at precisely the moment when the 2026 El Niño is likely to be approaching its peak. The delegates arriving in Turkey will be doing so against a backdrop of disrupted agricultural seasons in the southern hemisphere, elevated hurricane activity in the Pacific, and weather records being broken at an unusual rate in Europe.

Whether that context produces more ambitious commitments or simply more exhausted negotiators is an open question. The track record of climate summits is not encouraging on this point. But if there is a moment to make the case that implementation matters more than ambition — which is precisely the case that Turkey’s COP31 presidency is making — a super El Niño year is arguably it.