Developing El Niño Raises Concerns for Global Food Supplies and Olive Growers
Scientists warn a strengthening El Niño in the Pacific could become very strong by winter, intensifying heat, drought and rainfall extremes that threaten crops and food prices.
Scientists warn that a potent El Niño is developing in the tropical Pacific, with forecasts suggesting it could become one of the strongest in decades.
El Niño conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world.
El Niño, the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, is a recurring natural climate phenomenon that originates in the equatorial Pacific when sea surface temperatures rise above normal.
The pattern typically develops every two to seven years, raising global temperatures and disrupting rainfall patterns. Its counterpart, La Niña, is associated with cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the same region.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, El Niño conditions are already present and expected to strengthen through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2026–27.
NOAA’s latest probabilistic outlook puts the chance of a “very strong” El Niño from November 2026 through January 2027 at 63 percent, a level that would rank among the strongest events in records dating back to 1950.
The intensity of El Niño is defined by sea surface temperature anomalies in a key monitoring zone of the Pacific. An anomaly above 2 ºC is generally associated with a very strong event.
However, NOAA cautioned that a stronger event does not guarantee that the expected impacts will be felt everywhere. Instead, it can increase the likelihood of typical outcomes, including drought in some regions and heavy rainfall in others.
The World Meteorological Organization said most forecast models indicate that the emerging El Niño will be at least moderate and possibly strong, while warning that it could intensify heatwaves, droughts and extreme rainfall.
In recent decades, the strongest El Niño events occurred in 1982–83, 1997–98 and 2015–16. The most recent El Niño, in 2023–24, was among the five strongest on record and contributed to record global temperatures in 2024, as Olive Oil Times previously reported.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged governments to treat the developing event as an urgent climate warning.
“El Niño conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world,” Guterres said in a video statement. “Impacts will hit even harder, travel even farther and cross borders with devastating speed.”
The climate pattern can affect consumers far from the Pacific, including at supermarket shelves, by disrupting the production of staple crops and other basic foods in several regions at the same time.
According to a Reuters report, scenarios for the new El Niño include price shocks of 10 to 50 percent across core commodities, with rice, palm oil, sugarcane and coffee among the most exposed crops.
The phenomenon can also affect agriculture at the regional level, including in olive-growing countries where production depends heavily on winter chill, flowering conditions and rainfall patterns.
In 2024, Peru experienced unusually warm temperatures attributed to El Niño, depriving many olive trees of the necessary winter chill hours. Heavy rainfall during flowering further reduced fruit set.
The combined effect was severe. The country’s olive oil harvest fell by almost 90 percent compared with the previous year, according to producers and industry officials.
In Europe, the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s science agency, said the 2026–27 El Niño is virtually certain and may reach very high intensity, with the possibility of becoming unprecedented.
The JRC report said much of the world, including the Americas, Oceania and the Euro-Asian continent, could experience unusually warm conditions from September as the phenomenon develops.
While El Niño has its most direct effects in tropical and subtropical regions, the report warned that its impacts compound ongoing global warming, existing vulnerabilities and other crises.
The report also said Europe could experience warmer conditions in autumn, with the effect potentially intensifying in spring 2027.
In the Mediterranean, the direct influence of El Niño is more limited because the region lies far from the Pacific. However, scientists say the phenomenon can still have indirect effects, especially when combined with a warming climate.
Climatologist Carlos da Camara of the Dom Luiz Institute at the University of Lisbon told Euronews that El Niño could amplify heat risks in Portugal, a significant olive oil producer.
“My concern is that there may be a heatwave like the one in 2003, which was the most severe ever recorded in Europe,” da Camara said.
He warned that recent storms linked to the Kristin depression had brought down millions of trees, increasing the amount of dry biomass available to burn and raising the risk of large-scale wildfires.