Here’s what ‘strongest El Nino in living memory’ means for UK weather next year

Brits have been seriously warned

Since records began, the summer of 2026 is set to be the hottest on record in the UK, as in August, even average conditions mean that the temperatures will surpass the records set last year.

An El Nino event is declared when sea temperatures in the eastern Pacific rise 0.5C above the long-term average.

Due to this phenomenon, the weather pattern impacts rainfall and average temperatures across the globe.

Over the coming months, the 2026 El Nino is forecast to raise sea temperatures more than 3C, as the Met Office said that would make the weather event “the largest since the 19th century”.

What El Nino means for the UK

El Nino recurs every two to seven years, when Pacific trade winds weaken and warm water spreads east, releasing heat into the atmosphere.

With below-average monsoon rains in India and suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity, there is growing evidence that those shifts have begun.

According to the Met Office, the UK could face a greater risk of a wet, stormy autumn, following a summer of amber health alerts and advice on how to keep cool.

"We have many months to go while this event continues to develop," said Dr Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, "and that's one of the reasons that we have increased confidence that this will be a record-setting event", Prof Adam Scaife, head of long-range forecasting at the Met Office said.

How the El Nino conditions developed

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), El Nino conditions are now under way in the tropical Pacific.

The agency said that “El Nino conditions developed over the past month, as shown by above-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the central to eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean”.

As a sign that the atmosphere is now responding to the warmer ocean, not just the ocean warming on its own, NOAA has also seen the winds above the equatorial Pacific begin to shift.

The biggest concern about what El Nino is and why could it mean record temperatures is that all this is happening on an already much hotter planet.

According to Prof Adam Scaife, “we do need to worry about the impacts”.

“The current El Nino is… riding on top of a substantial amount of global warming.”

“This means that the actual temperatures in affected regions could well be unprecedented, as the warming from El Nino is being topped up by climate change.”