A group of climate scientists led by Dr. James Jansen of Columbia University is warning that a super El Niño event forming in the Pacific Ocean could make 2026 the hottest year ever recorded, and that the warming won't stop there. The prediction, laid out in a report covered by the Daily Mail, rests on ocean surface temperatures already running hotter than they were before the 2023 El Niño cycle began.
The claim matters less for its headline shock value than for what it reveals about how climate predictions are made, how they're framed, and what they actually tell the public, versus what gets lost in the alarm.
Here's what the numbers say. The average sea surface temperature right now sits 0.13°C warmer than it was before the start of the 2023 El Niño year. Dr. Jansen and his co-authors argue that because land covers 30 percent of the globe, that ocean gap translates to a projected global warming of 0.17°C for 2026 relative to 2023. Since global temperature in 2024 was 0.11°C higher than in 2023, the researchers calculate that 2026 would beat the 2024 record by 0.06°C, roughly one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit.
That is the margin on which the "hottest year on record" headline hangs.
Dr. Jansen and his co-authors wrote in a blog post hosted on Substack:
"That margin is wide enough that we are willing to make the prediction that 2026 will be the warmest year."
They went further, adding a line that reads more like advocacy than science:
"Of course, 2027 will be still hotter."
That second statement is presented without qualification, no "likely," no "we project," no confidence interval. Just certainty about a year that hasn't started yet, built on a model that hasn't been validated against the outcome it claims to predict. Readers can judge for themselves whether "of course" belongs in a scientific forecast.
The World Meteorological Organisation's latest report said the return of strong or "super" El Niño conditions is likely as early as May or June. Some scientists have suggested the approaching cycle could be the strongest in 140 years. The WMO also described it as "almost certain" that a warming El Niño cycle will begin in the second half of the year.
El Niño years are marked by sustained warm temperatures across the Pacific Ocean. Those warm waters spread out and raise the Earth's average surface temperature. The cycle repeats every two to seven years, and its effects ripple into weather patterns worldwide, hotter, drier conditions in Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa.
As NOAA has signaled, the shift from La Niña to El Niño carries real consequences for the 2026 hurricane season and broader U.S. weather patterns.
A few details in the data deserve attention that they rarely get in climate coverage. The first three months of 2025 have been about 0.1°C cooler on average compared to 2024. That cooling doesn't fit neatly into a "hotter every year" narrative, so it tends to be mentioned in passing rather than explored.
In 2024, global warming exceeded 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average for the first time. That threshold had been treated for years as a hard line by international climate bodies. When it was crossed, the response from the same institutions was largely to move the goalposts, redefining the benchmark as a long-term average rather than a single-year breach.
The Met Office, in its annual forecast published last December, predicted that 2026 would be 1.46°C above the pre-industrial average, with a range between 1.34°C and 1.58°C. Previous estimates had placed the figure at about 1.47°C. Dr. Jansen's group says those forecasts underestimate the impact of global warming and the coming El Niño weather, in other words, that the official bodies aren't alarmed enough.
That pattern is worth noting. The prediction isn't just that temperatures will rise. It's that the existing institutional forecasts, already predicting near-record warmth, are too conservative. The argument is always in one direction: hotter than expected, worse than projected, more urgent than previously thought.
El Niño is a real phenomenon with measurable effects. Nobody disputes that. The 1997-98 super El Niño is the comparison point Jansen's group uses. During August 1997, the average maximum temperature at London's Heathrow airport was 25.8°C (78.4°F), with a top reading of 31.5°C (88.7°F). The UK experienced an exceptionally hot, sunny, and humid August marked by heatwaves.
If the current El Niño cycle reaches comparable intensity, the UK and other regions could see similar conditions. Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa typically face hotter and drier summers during strong El Niño years.
The United States has already dealt with unusual weather this year. A record-breaking spring heat wave sent temperatures past 90 degrees across the eastern seaboard, and the broader pattern of extreme weather events has kept emergency planners busy.
El Niño's influence extends to storm activity across the Pacific basin. Warm ocean conditions feed tropical cyclone development, and forecasters watch the Pacific closely during El Niño years for signs of intensified typhoon seasons, a concern that has already materialized in recent Pacific storm activity near Guam.
Climate science operates in a peculiar incentive structure. Predictions of record-breaking heat generate headlines, funding, and political leverage. Predictions of modest warming or natural variability do not. This doesn't mean every alarming forecast is wrong. But it means the public should weigh these predictions with the same skepticism they'd apply to any field where the rewards flow in one direction.
Dr. Jansen's team is predicting a record based on a margin of 0.06°C, six hundredths of a degree Celsius. That is not a number most people can feel, measure in their daily lives, or distinguish from noise in a global dataset. It is, however, a number large enough to generate a headline that says "hottest year on record."
Meanwhile, Colorado State forecasters have projected a slightly below-average 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, a finding that cuts against the simple narrative that El Niño makes everything worse everywhere. El Niño tends to suppress Atlantic hurricane formation through increased wind shear, even as it supercharges Pacific storms. The real picture is more complicated than any single headline allows.
The honest questions, how much of the warming is natural El Niño cycling, how much is long-term trend, how reliable are models predicting temperature to the hundredth of a degree years in advance, tend to get steamrolled by the urgency machine. The WMO report, the Met Office forecast, and Dr. Jansen's blog post all point in the same direction, but they also all operate within the same institutional ecosystem that treats warming as a crisis requiring immediate government intervention.
Several questions go unanswered. Which specific climate models support the claim that this could be the strongest El Niño of the century? The reporting references "some models" without naming them. Who are Dr. Jansen's co-authors? The group is described generically. What is the track record of previous "hottest year" predictions made at similar lead times?
These aren't trivial gaps. When scientists ask the public to accept forecasts that will be used to justify trillions of dollars in policy spending, the public has a right to know exactly which models produced the numbers, who funded the work, and how prior predictions from the same teams performed against actual outcomes.
Extreme weather events, from deadly flooding in Texas to Pacific typhoons, are real and carry real human costs. Families lose homes. Communities rebuild. Those stakes demand honest, transparent science, not press releases dressed up as prophecy.
The El Niño cycle will do what it does. The Pacific will warm. Temperatures may well set a new record in 2026. But when the margin is six hundredths of a degree and the forecast comes wrapped in language like "of course, 2027 will be still hotter," the public is entitled to ask whether they're reading science or salesmanship.
Taxpayers deserve predictions they can verify, not ones they're simply told to trust.
