UPDATE: June 12th, 2026: It’s official, this year will be an El Nino winter. NOAA’s National Weather Service announced the news yesterday that El Nino has formed in the South Pacific. The last time an El Nino formed was over the 2023 and 2024 season.
Climate drivers are indicating that this El Nino could be the strongest in 76-years, with South Pacific waters set to warm by 2 degrees C. Does the South Pacific impact the North Atlantic? Well, actually yes. Generally speaking, an El Nino winter means smaller surf and bad wind for this side of the globe. While the opposite is true for Pacific based countries. Expect Pipeline, Teahupo’o, Cloudbreak and even down into JBay — when the Pacific storms are big enough to feed the southern Atlantic.
El Nino is the opposite of La Nina, which is the ENSO-cycle’s cooling phase.
The South Pacific swings between the two, and when the ocean is neither cooling down or warming up, that’s called ENSO-neutral. And ENSO is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This is a phenomenon to do with the warming and cooling of the Southern Pacific, but also a neutral phase which is between the two.
It’s likely you’ve heard of El Niño, due to American surf magazines and the likes shouting about it. El Niño occurs in the winter, but it is indicated by the weakening of the South Pacific trade winds. If these trades start letting up in the spring, then it allows the water to heat up. These warm water pools effectively pull the jetstream south, and allow big storms to filter into the northern part of the globe. This process takes months, and needs to get started by the spring.
And does it impact the rest of Europe? The short answer is; maybe! The long answer is a complex web of intricate climate drivers and indicators.
NOAA’s latest update reads: “El Niño conditions developed over the past month, as shown by above-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the central to eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
“Low-level westerly wind anomalies and upper-level easterly wind anomalies were evident over the central equatorial Pacific. Convection was slightly above average over the central and east-central equatorial Pacific and was near or below average over Indonesia. The traditional and equatorial Southern Oscillation indices were negative. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system reflected the onset of El Niño conditions.
“There is a a 63% chance of a very stron El Nino during November to January. That would rank among the largest El Niño events since 1950. Even very strong El Niño events do not lead to the expected impact everywhere, but stronger events can more significantly tilt the odds in favour of expected outcomes. In summary, El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27.”
With El Niño on the horizon, we can look to prior El Niño years to get an understanding of what this means for European surf. Looking back at other years, we know December could see more low pressure during El Niño, which means; more consistent and bigger surf for that time of year.
But, we could also see high pressure come into play through the beginning of 2027. And these high pressure systems sit along Norway and Greenland – which would essentially block swells coming into Europe. Those low pressure systems mentioned earlier will be scuppered by the high pressure.
So the trending data means; there could be more consistent surf over December, but there could be blocking high pressure systems between January and February next year, due to the ENSO cycle altering the atmospheric circulation.
Bad news for weather fans, El Niño also brings mild and wet weather at the start of the winter, the drier winters as the season goes on.
Ultimately, we know the jetstream will be pulled further south than usual, we know the South Pacific will heat up – and it’ll be interesting to watch El Niño unfold this year. We’ll update this piece as we go.
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