The strongest El Niño hasn't peaked yet, but no one alive has seen one this big
The 2026 El Niño already exceeded the peaks of the two strongest events on record, 1982 and 2015, back in autumn — and its peak usually doesn't arrive until winter. This is not a climate forecast for the future; it is weather that is happening now.
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The UN didn't say retreat — a reporter said it first
On September 2, 2026, the UN Environment Programme published a report titled "Limiting Overshoot." AP reporter Seth Borenstein wrote "strategic retreat" in the first sentence of his story, and the phrase was copied into headlines worldwide, turning into an end-of-the-world narrative of "we're done for." But the word "retreat" does not appear in the report at all; the UN was in fact doubling down on emissions cuts. What was actually given up was only the claim that 1.5 degrees can still be held. The report's own text says: every fraction of a degree avoided, every year of overshoot shortened, saves lives, protects ecosystems and reduces economic losses.
— Allie WardClimate change isn't coming to knock — it's already at the table
Shepherd says the framing he grew up hearing was "climate change is coming," and that framing is now outdated. His words: it isn't just sitting at the dinner table, it's eating dessert, the appetizer and all the main courses. He explicitly rejects any narrative that talks about climate change in the future tense — people used to discuss what 2050 or 2100 would look like, but it is already happening and will only get worse, because the emissions cuts that should be happening aren't really happening. He also notes that adaptation and resilience measures are increasing, because some places have realized this is inevitable.
— Marshall ShepherdEl Niño is named after fishermen who caught no fish at Christmas
Every two to seven years, the Pacific trade winds weaken or even reverse, warm water in the western Pacific flows back east, and the upwelling of cold water along the South American coast shuts down. Peruvian fishermen found they caught no fish around Christmas — because the nutrients brought up by that cold water were cut off — and so the name El Niño was born. The opposite, cold phase is La Niña. Shepherd stresses that this is a coupled ocean-atmosphere system, so it takes both meteorology and oceanography to understand. El Niño disturbs the upper-level jet stream through "teleconnections," spreading its effects globally; California, Georgia, the Amazon and the Sahel are all on that chain.
— Marshall ShepherdNo hurricanes in the Atlantic, but Hawaii issued its first-ever tornado warning
El Niño suppresses Atlantic hurricane activity while strengthening the Pacific hurricane season. As of September 8, not a single hurricane had formed in the Atlantic, only a few tropical storms, likely breaking the record for the latest first hurricane since 1941. On the other side, Hawaii got the first tornado warning in the state's history because of Hurricane Lowell, with gusts on Kauai reaching 84 miles per hour. Shepherd says this is El Niño's two sets of books: the East Coast benefits, the Pacific islands take the strain. California, meanwhile, faces strong storms, rain and mudslides.
— Marshall ShepherdEight degrees of warm water below the surface means there's no turning back
The threshold for calling an El Niño is sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific running 0.5 degrees Celsius above average, and right now they are already two to three degrees above. More critical is what lies beneath the surface — the estimate Shepherd cites is subsurface water temperatures running eight degrees above normal. He says this is what convinces him the 2026-2027 El Niño warming event will not fall back. World Meteorological Organization data show that by February 2027 this El Niño is almost certain to still be going strong. He stresses that he is not a scientist given to exaggeration, but this may be the strongest El Niño that anyone alive on Earth has ever seen.
— Marshall ShepherdWeather is mood, climate is personality
Shepherd uses this metaphor to explain why every El Niño is different — they have their own "personalities," but the West Coast's average personality is heavy rain and natural disasters like landslides and mudslides. His concrete advice is an "El Niño plan": know where your important documents are, know what extreme weather your area tends to get under El Niño, and know which National Weather Service office covers you — Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento each have their own office issuing warnings. He also mentions the nighttime tornadoes common in the Southeast, and suggests people make checking the weather before bed a habit, like brushing their teeth.
— Marshall ShepherdTeleconnections: how a pool of warm water in the Pacific changes global weather
Shepherd explains that the mechanism by which El Niño affects the globe is called "teleconnection." A large pool of warm water in the central and eastern Pacific alters the atmospheric column above it, disturbing the upper-level jet stream. He uses the analogy of ripples in a pond: drop a few sticks or a stone in the middle of the ripples and they get scrambled. The disturbance El Niño creates propagates through the atmosphere via teleconnection patterns, carrying weather changes around the world. He also stresses that it is precisely because fluid dynamics is governed by physical equations — the Navier-Stokes equations, thermodynamic equations, the continuity equation — that weather is predictable to some degree; forecasting is essentially predicting how this fluid will flow.
— Marshall ShepherdAfter El Niño comes a fiercer fire season
Shepherd points out that the problem with extreme weather is that "both sets of books go wrong" — it isn't just drier or just wetter, it's both. El Niño brings rain, storms and mudslides to the western US, but it also makes vegetation grow heavily; a year or two later, when the climate turns dry, that vegetation becomes fuel and amplifies fire season. He calls this a Jekyll and Hyde, dual-personality effect, and says it is why he has devoted so much attention to studying the western US. He also mentions that his colleague Kim Cobb has studied whether El Niño is getting stronger or more frequent because of climate change, and thinks a link is likely.
— Marshall ShepherdIn their own words · checked verbatim
nowhere in that UN report does it mention retreat
Allie Ward5:24
It is not only sitting at the dinner table, it's having dessert, appetizers, and all the main courses.
Marshall Shepherd11:40
weather is your mood and climate is your personality
Marshall Shepherd38:33
And Allie, I am not a scientist that speaks in hyperbole. Yeah. But this 20... 2026, 2027 El Nino could be the strongest El Nino that anyone alive on the planet today has seen.
Marshall Shepherd39:34
it's the extremes on all sides of the ledger that are the problem as our climate shifts. It's not just it's going to get drier or it's going to get wetter. It's both.
Marshall Shepherd56:37
The El Nino doesn't care whether you're blue or red. It just does what it does because it's a part of a naturally varying system.
Marshall Shepherd58:41
Your grass grows naturally, too. But when you fertilize the lawn, it grows differently. And so we've got to move beyond the either or narrative. It is and and we have a big problem.
Marshall Shepherd58:41
Figures
| 2026 El Niño sea surface temperature anomaly | 2-3 degrees Celsius above average (the El Niño threshold is 0.5 degrees) | 35:24 |
| Subsurface ocean temperature anomaly | about 8 degrees Celsius above normal | 35:24 |
| Record for latest first Atlantic hurricane | latest since 1941 was September 11 | 19:55 |
| Hurricane Lowell gusts in Hawaii | 84 miles per hour on Kauai | 20:55 |
| Potential decline in global food production | up to 14 percent by 2050 | 6:26 |
| Potential glacier mass loss | more than a quarter could be lost by 2100 | 6:26 |
| Projected winter warming in northern Canada | 50 percent chance of 10 degrees Celsius warming in Nunavut | 30:11 |
| MODIS ocean colour data | designed to run 6 years, has actually run more than 20 | 53:24 |
| Share of West Coast annual rainfall from atmospheric rivers | 30 to 50 percent | 37:30 |
Glossary
- ENSO / El Niño-Southern Oscillation
- The natural coupled oscillation of the Pacific Ocean and atmosphere, comprising the warm phase El Niño and the cold phase La Niña.
- teleconnection
- A pattern in which an ocean or atmosphere anomaly in one region remotely affects weather in other parts of the world by disturbing the jet stream.
- atmospheric rivers
- Narrow bands of water vapour that turn into rainfall when they make landfall on the West Coast, accounting for 30 to 50 percent of the region's annual rainfall.
- jet stream
- A band of strong winds circling the globe from west to east, whose ridges and troughs shape global weather patterns.
- warm blob
- A large patch of anomalously warm water in the North Pacific that has not cooled as expected, independent of El Niño, and which also affects fisheries.
How to listen
Founders and investors watching climate risk, agricultural supply chains, insurance and infrastructure; engineers who want to understand how El Niño works and not get steered by headlines.
The roughly two-minute show intro at the top and the behind-the-scenes chatter at the end can be skipped; the main segment starts at 4:20.