Amid escalating wildfires and soaring temperatures, the “super El Niño” is already making its mark faster than experts expected on Canada and other parts of the globe.
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) forecasted in Jan. 2026 that this year “will likely be among the hottest years on record.”
Combined with the warmer global temperatures that El Niño causes, that can amplify conditions like drought, heavy rain and flooding, and warmer than usual winters, which are already happening in many parts of the world from worsening climate change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) July 2026 consensus forecast states that “a strong coupling of the atmospheric and oceanic circulation across the Pacific contributes to very high confidence that El Niño will continue through early 2027.”
In addition, there is an 81 per cent change of a “very strong” El Niño during Oct.-Dec. this year, ranking “among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950.”
“What we’re seeing is this El Niño continues to strengthen faster than we’ve ever recorded before,” Global News meteorologist Anthony Farnell said. “A lot of this can be blamed on climate change.”
Global average sea surface temperatures reached 20.86C in June, rising past records set in 2023 and 2024, the European Union Copernicus Marine Service states. This was expected “with the onset of El Niño conditions.”
To declare an El Niño, ocean temperatures in a particular region of the tropical Pacific must generally clear 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term average.
A super El Niño, in contrast, happens when temperatures are more than two degrees above the average.
An El Niño appears approximately every two to seven years, typically last 12 to 18 months.
Here are some of the climate challenges to keep an eye on over the second half of the year.
Wildfires across northern Ontario have torched more of the province’s forest than during any previous year on record, according to early estimates.
The province’s latest numbers released on July 21 suggest fires have burned through more than 7,250 square kilometers of Ontario’s forests, surpassing the previous record set in 2021.
In addition, more than 30 evacuation orders are in place across B.C., as about 110 active wildfires continue to burn in the province, with 48 of them considered out of control as of Aug. 1.
The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre currently states that there are 729 active wildfires in Canada, with 4,460 total year-to-date wildfires.
Federal government officials stated on July 9 that despite it being “challenging,” this year’s wildfire season has “not reached the scale seen in 2025.”
Many parts of Canada were stuck in what many experts refer to as a “heat dome” earlier in July, which occurs when a large area of high pressure in the upper atmosphere acts as a reservoir that traps heat and humidity, according to the U.S. National Weather Service.
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“I think that’s something that’s going to continue and maybe become worse heading into the fall with this El Niño strengthening,” Farnell said.
“We’re going to be seeing this probably linger into September. Just the fact that you have longer nights heading into the fall, it means that the temperature drops more, there’s higher humidity in the forest, especially the boreal forest.”
With the Atlantic hurricane season beginning in June and ending in November, as of July 19, only one tropical storm has occurred thus far.
This is thanks to the development of the El Niño, according to Farnell.
“The Atlantic hurricane season is a lot weaker,” he said. “There aren’t any named storms out there and we’re not expecting it to be very active for the next month or two and that can impact the amount of moisture that falls in Atlantic Canada, also in Europe.
“A lot of these hurricanes end up recurving and moving into Europe as post-tropical or extratropical storms, and we’re just not going to be seeing that.”
An El Niño event can slow down the development of hurricanes, even during the peak of its season.
“Hurricanes like the winds to be constant with height. In an El Niño event, the winds tend to become stronger with and that tends to suppress hurricanes,” he said.
Farnell also stated that “the wind shear doesn’t allow for these hurricanes to develop,” which is the changes in wind speed and direction in the atmosphere that disrupt the development of tropical systems.
“As you go up in the troposphere, the wind direction changes with height and it just tears these thunderstorms apart before they can congregate, develop, and turn into, whether it be a tropical depression, tropical storm or hurricane,” Farnell said. “That’s something that I think we’re going to see as we get towards the heart of the season, which is August and September.”
However, the Pacific hurricane season is anticipated to be a “very active year,” with seven named storms, two of which classified as hurricanes, forming thus far, according to the National Hurricane Center.
“Hurricanes are driven by warm surface temperatures, warm sea surface. A hurricane gets its energy from evaporating water from the ocean and that water vapour then condenses and it releases energy,” said atmospheric physics professor Kent Moore at the University of Toronto.
“So, when you have really warm sea surface temperatures you can get enhanced hurricanes. There are warmer sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific, and so all things in equal, that would lead to more and more cyclones.”
With the peak of El Niño coming in December, the upcoming Canadian fall and winter is expected to be “warmer than usual” with “rainy” and “mild” conditions, according to Moore.
“In Canada, because it’s going to be warmer, we’ll probably see less snow. We also may see more rain,” he said. “Snow is a way to save all that winter precipitation and allow it to have an effect come next spring, but if it’s raining during the winter, then that effect is minimized because the moisture goes away quite quickly. So, I would expect it to be less snowfall across the country.”
Farnell also expects “much of Canada to be a warmer and drier than a normal winter because of the El Niño,” which would worsen droughts in B.C. and Alberta.
Without that winter snowpack, Canada may also be at risk for another active wildfire season next year.
It is also “quite possible” Canada sees elevated flooding across the country as a result. St. Catharines, Ont., declared a state of emergency on Aug. 4 after the city received significant flooding in the past week.
“When it rains, it tends to rain harder now, and that’s because the temperatures are warmer, there’s more water vapour in the atmosphere, which means there’s no possibility of condensation causing precipitation,” Moore said.
“It’s quite likely that we may get more freezing rain situations where the temperature is just around zero and it starts to rain.”
Despite the acceleration of these weather events, the strength of the El Niño still leaves much up in the air.
“Whenever you have unprecedented events like this on a global scale, you can make forecasts, but you really don’t know what the outcome is going be,” said Farnell.
