“Supersized” El Niño’s harshest weather still ahead, including extreme heat, drought, floods, U.N. warns

September 3, 2026 / 12:38 PM EDT / CBS News

With the burgeoning El Niño now forecast to intensify significantly in the coming months, the "supersized" climate event will likely have an outsized impact on severe weather around the world, fueling heat, drought and flooding, among other extremes, the United Nations warned Thursday.

"El Niño is being supersized before our eyes," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. "The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up."

Guterres was responding to an updated forecast outlook by the World Meteorological Organization released Thursday, which predicted the current El Niño's strength and lifespan. The organization, an agency within the U.N. focused on global weather and climate, said in the update that El Niño is expected to continue deepening and eventually become "very strong" near the end of the year.

El Niño Southern Oscillation Cycle, or ENSO, is a climate pattern dictated by sea surface and atmospheric conditions in a section of the tropical Pacific Ocean that influences weather all over the world. El Niño coincides with unusually high ocean temperatures in that region. It also typically brings heat, drought and flooding…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/healthwatch/