Developing El Niño becomes strongest on record weeks before expected peak

The UK is thousands of miles from the tropical Pacific and so the effects of El Niño tend to be less clear-cut than in other regions.

However, it does bring the increased chance of wet and stormy conditions across north-west Europe during the late autumn and early winter.

A forecast released by the Met Office this autumn stated that there were already “signals for increased rainfall and storminess in autumn here in the UK”, especially into November and December.

The winter of 2015 and 2016, which coincided with a very strong El Niño, brought a succession of major storms delivering what experts at the time described as the most extreme flooding on record.

In addition to storminess, El Niño can also be associated with UK cold spells in the late winter – but the link is not a strong one and the past evidence is mixed.

The so-called Big Freeze of winter 2009/2010 was, at the time, the coldest in three decades – and this coincided with an El Niño.

However, 2006/2007 was also an El Niño winter and that was unseasonably warm.

As this unprecedented El Niño approaches its likely peak towards the end of 2026, scientists will continue to monitor its development – and its impact on weather around the world.