Study Links Rising El Niño Intensity to Fossil Fuel Warming as This Year's 'Godzilla' Event Tracks Toward a Record Peak

Since NOAA declared the onset of this year's El Niño in June, sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific have sat at record levels for more than two months straight, and forecasters say the event, nicknamed "Godzilla," is still gaining strength heading into fall and winter.

A study published Thursday, August 27, in the journal Science examines that forecast from a new angle. Julia Cole, who chairs the University of Michigan's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, led a team that analyzed 1,000 years of fossil coral deposits from the Galápagos Islands, a spot she calls "right in the heart of El Niño country." Their conclusion: El Niño events have grown about 37% more variable and extreme since industrialization began, with the shift accelerating sharply after the 1982-83 super El Niño.

"We are seeing a trend of stronger El Niños, and the one we have now is consistent with that trend, it's not a fluke," Cole said, according to Common Dreams. "That is bad news for climate hazards and for people, particularly those who are badly impacted and yet have done little to cause climate change."

Cole's finding suggests a two-way relationship. El Niño is already known to temporarily spike global temperatures. Her research argues the reverse is also true, that decades of fossil-fuel warming are now supercharging El Niño itself. "Our findings suggest El Niño can supercharge global warming, but also global warming can supercharge El Niño, that is what we are seeing," Cole told the Guardian.

How strong is this one, really

NOAA's numbers back up the "record" framing. The agency's ENSO lead scientist, Michelle L'Heureux, told Popular Mechanics that chances favor a "very strong" El Niño emerging by 81% during October through December. June's Relative Oceanic Niño Index reading came in at 1.1°C above average, the fourth-highest June reading in 124 years of NOAA records.

The Washington Post, tracking monthly forecast updates, reported that as of early August, central Pacific ocean temperatures were projected to peak around 4.1°C (7.4°F) above average in December, more than a full degree hotter than the 2015-16 event, which itself ranks among the strongest since the 1877-78 season. The Post noted the projected peak has been revised upward compared with July's forecast, meaning this event has kept intensifying rather than leveling off.

What's already showing up, and what's still uncertain

The Post links this year's El Niño to a string of global effects already underway: a higher frequency of heat domes worldwide, extended heat records in Peru, destructive storms in Chile, stronger typhoons in the western Pacific, and a quieter-than-usual Atlantic hurricane season. The Guardian separately reported that this El Niño could push 50 million people into acute hunger before the end of 2027, largely tied to the drought and flood disruptions El Niño historically brings to farming regions across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

History gives reason for real concern but not certainty about outcomes. Popular Mechanics notes the 1982-83 event drove catastrophic flooding across the U.S. Southwest, while the 1997-98 event indirectly caused an estimated 23,000 deaths worldwide through floods, droughts and wildfires. Further back, the 1877-78 El Niño combined with other climate patterns to contribute to an estimated 50 million deaths from famine, a grim historical marker unrelated to this year's Guardian-cited hunger estimate.

CNN offers a useful caution: "El Niños of the past are not necessarily an accurate guide to El Niños of the future." The 2015-16 super El Niño, despite ranking among the strongest on record, dropped far less rain on California than the 1997-98 event did. That means a record-breaking ocean temperature reading doesn't guarantee a record-breaking disaster on land, even if California is again positioned to see elevated coastal flooding risk and record high tide levels this winter, according to CNN's reporting on the mechanics of El Niño-driven sea level rise.

The inherent limitations

Cole's coral-based conclusion rests on a single geographic proxy record, the Galápagos, standing in for a Pacific-wide phenomenon that only produces a handful of "super" events per century. That's an inherent limitation of the science. With so few extreme El Niño events in the historical record, separating a genuine fossil-fuel-driven trend from natural multi-decadal ocean variability is statistically difficult, a challenge Cole's own team had to address by reaching back a full millennium for comparison data. The study's finding of a 37% increase in variability since industrialization is a strong statistical signal, but it doesn't by itself prove exactly how much of this particular event's intensity traces to fossil fuel emissions versus the natural randomness built into the ENSO cycle.

What happens next is straightforward to track. NOAA updates its ENSO forecasts monthly, and the Washington Post is tracking those updates through the projected December peak. Whether ocean temperatures actually reach that 4.1°C anomaly, and whether it translates into the kind of California flooding and global food-security crisis sources are already warning about, will be measurable within the next several months rather than left as speculation.