The Pacific heat pulse is temporary, but scientists warn that its climate impacts are not.

[..] Climate scientists also recently published a study showing that strong El Niño events can trigger what they called “climate regime shifts,” meaning abrupt, lasting changes in heat, rainfall and drought patterns.

[..] In 2015, heat from the tropical Pacific helped raise the global annual average temperature irreversibly past 1 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline. And in 2024, Earth experienced the hottest year recorded in human history, aided by another El Niño boost.

Even a moderately strong El Niño during the next 12 to 18 months could drive the average global temperature to about 1.7 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level, climate scientist James Hansen told Inside Climate News. Hansen doubts the world will meaningfully cool back down to below the 1.5 degree Celsius mark after the El Niño fades.

Passing that threshold may not be like falling off a climate cliff, but it’s definitely the point when the edge starts crumbling, with rapid changes to relatively stable systems of forests, water, rain and temperatures that have sustained people and ecosystems for millennia.

Climate impacts amplified by strong El Niños keep hitting the same vulnerable regions, may be more widespread than previously thought and can persist long after the tropical Pacific cools, according to an El Niño study published December 2025 in Nature Communications.

[..] The research also uncovered strong El Niño signals in the form of soil moisture changes in central southern Asia, central Australia, the Amazon and western Greenland. The land responses are “linked to the way super El Niño reshapes regional precipitation and temperature through teleconnections,” he said in an email.

“These shifts matter because they can turn a short-lived climate shock into a longer-lasting risk,” he wrote. If soil moisture stays below normal for several years, crops are exposed to repeated heat and water stress across multiple growing seasons with “direct consequences for food production and water security.”

[..] Kug said that El Niño and global warming may be locked into a vicious climate cycle. The study findings suggest global warming amplifies the impacts associated with super El Niños, and “makes the climate system more prone to persistent shifts once those impacts are triggered.”

The practical challenge, Kug said, is not just preparing for a single season of extremes, but for a climate shift that will also alter conditions in the future.

“Super El Niño may not just cause a one-time extreme event,” he wrote. “It can shift the background climate conditions that people and ecosystems rely on.” https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25042026/el-nino-earth-warming/