El Nino is here and scientists fear it'll be big, bad and costly with heat, floods, droughts, fires
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500+ questions on Geography with explanations
📌 Summary:
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El Nino has formed in a warmed-up Pacific Ocean and is expected to grow to historic strength, meteorologists announced on June 11, 2026.
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El Nino is a natural warming cycle that, layered on top of fossil-fuel-driven global warming, is likely to turbocharge extreme weather worldwide.
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Forecasters say it may rival or exceed the record 1997-98 El Nino, which triggered billions of dollars in damage via heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires.
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For India, a strong El Nino is historically associated with weaker southwest monsoon rainfall and drought risk, threatening agriculture, water supply and food prices.
🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS1 Geography (ocean-atmosphere interaction, ENSO and monsoon) and GS3 (disaster/agriculture/food security) — central to understanding monsoon variability and climate-linked disasters.
📝 Prelims Facts:
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El Nino is the warm phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO); La Nina is the cool phase.
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It involves abnormal warming of central-eastern equatorial Pacific surface waters and a weakening of trade winds.
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The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and ENSO indices track its strength; El Nino years often correlate with deficient Indian monsoon.
🔑 Key Term: ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) — a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon in the tropical Pacific whose warm (El Nino) and cool (La Nina) phases drive global weather extremes.
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