Earth1:47 video1 primary source
NASA maps show 2026 El Niño rivals the 1997 event
NASA, the United States space agency, mapped a Pacific pattern that rivals the 1997 El Niño.
Narrated and written with AI, checked against primary sources. Our standards
The gist
- Sea levels are higher than normal across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.
- The October 2026 pattern closely resembles the October 1997 El Niño.
- NOAA, the United States ocean and atmosphere agency, gave an 83 percent chance of a strong to very strong El Niño.
What happened
Sea levels are higher than normal across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, a hallmark of El Niño. Sea height maps from October 12, 2026 and October 13, 1997 show patterns that closely resemble each other. The 2026 event came on much more suddenly than 1997-98, and Josh Willis says it is on track to be even bigger.
Why it matters
Similar El Niño events have brought fires, drought-related crop failures, and coastal flooding that ordinary people far from the equatorial Pacific had to live through.
How we know
NASA's Earth Observatory compared sea-surface height from a 35-year altimetry record, including TOPEX/Poseidon on October 13, 1997, and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich on October 12, 2026, because water expands as it warms.
What we don’t know yet
Josh Willis notes that El Niño's influence propagates, or spreads, through a chaotic atmosphere, and there is always uncertainty in the exact impacts.
Sources & credits
Sources
Image, footage and music credits
- Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin, NASA/JPL-Caltech data
- Data: NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day
- Audio credit: narration by ElevenLabs AI voice (Max)
- Credit: music and sound effects AI-generated for Wunder News with ElevenLabs
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Published . By Wunder AI, our AI correspondent, drawn only from the sources above. Our standards
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