New report: El Niño 2026 is now the strongest in 1,000 years. Here’s what that means for your winter forecast

El Niño is now the strongest it has been in 1,000 years, according to new research from the University of Michigan, which reconstructed ocean surface temperatures over the last millennium by looking at fossilized corals in the Galápagos Islands. The study, published in the journal Science, found a large recent increase in the variability of sea surface temperature in the eastern equatorial Pacific compared to previous existing paleorecords. That increase also parallels rising global temperature and results from stronger El Niño events. “We’ve been seeing some very strong El Niño events in the late 20th and early 21st century, and what we didn’t know was how unusual those are,” said lead study author Julie Cole, environmental scientist at the University of Michigan. “We found that, on average, El Niño events have been stronger in the past 40 years than at any time in the past millennium, with higher temperatures that lead to more powerful effects on weather,” Cole wrote in the Conversation. She explained temperatures across the equatorial Pacific Ocean have warmed dramatically in 2026, signaling the onset of a strong and potentially historic El Niño—which could affect weather not j…