El Niño

A powerful El Niño can rearrange marine ecosystems, sending sharks and their prey into unfamiliar waters. The biggest changes happen in the Pacific, but the ripple effects can extend far beyond it.

A record El Niño event could help shape Florida’s winter weather by producing wetter conditions and an increased risk of severe weather.

The Atlantic hurricane season is entering what is typically the busiest stretch, but an El Niño event is expected to suppress tropical activity.

Saharan dust and wind shear are keeping things quieter in the Gulf, but an ocean scientist says, "it only takes one in the wrong place."

Researchers are producing new corals using the genes of those more resilient to heat, they've established two gene banks and they are doing cooling experiments, like canopies that float on the water.

Researchers are moving some corals to deeper, cooler depths, while more sensitive ones go to a temperature-controlled lab. Others will have to tough out the heat.

A strengthening El Niño over the Pacific Ocean may be already influencing Florida's weather, with long-range outlooks indicating a return to below-average rainfall.

An El Niño has formed amid the warmer-than-normal waters in the tropical Pacific. Now it's a question of how intense the phenomenon will be and where effects like heat and drought will strike.

Since reliable global temperature records began in the 1950s, Earth's warmest years have occurred during El Niño events, while the coolest years have typically coincided with La Niña conditions.

Forecasters believe a strengthening El Niño pattern is likely to emerge in 2026 and continue into winter, thus influencing temperature and precipitation trends across the United States.

NOAA’s outlook for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season predicts below-normal activity as an impending El Niño will lead to increased wind shear across the basin.

A developing El Niño could affect Florida in two major ways: fewer Atlantic hurricanes, followed by a wetter, stormier winter with greater severe weather risk. NOAA says El Niño over a 60% chance of developing in summer 2026, with a 1-in-3 chance of becoming strong by late fall.