Meteorologists have declared that El Niño is underway. You may have seen the dramatic headlines: that a “super El Niño” is coming, for example, or that El Niño may cause 2027 to be the hottest year on record.
Over the coming months, scientists expect, El Niño will bring intensified rainstorms, worsened droughts, or heightened temperatures to different parts of the world. We’re already starting to see this El Niño bring something else – misleading or false claims.
This sort of misinformation might use El Niño as a convenient scapegoat for climate change, shifting blame away from greenhouse gases like CO2. See, for example, claims that El Niño’s effects on the weather are proof that CO2 has no effect on the climate or that Europe’s recent record-breaking heatwave is due to El Niño, not climate change.
Claims like these fall into a well-worn category of climate falsehoods – ones that try to claim that modern-day climate change is ‘completely natural’ without the involvement of CO2. But they also miss the mark. When we see a severe El Niño event today, we’re really seeing the effects it has on an already-warming world.
Below, we’ll explain what causes El Niño, how it overlaps with human-caused climate change, and what can make it an easy target for misinformation.
Source: 2026’s El Niño may bring storms, heatwaves – and misinformation – Science Feedback