Gareth Redmond-King said the upcoming El Niño event is acting as an accelerant to an already destabilized global climate system.
This intensification matters because the natural phenomenon amplifies existing climate stresses. By adding extreme heat and precipitation anomalies, El Niño can trigger more severe weather patterns, prolonged droughts, and catastrophic fires.
Redmond-King, the head of the International Programme at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said El Niño is "pouring fuel on that particular fire" of climate change. He said the event is effectively turbo-charging the impacts of a warming planet.
The interaction between these atmospheric patterns and human-induced climate change creates a compounding effect. These anomalies lead to volatile weather shifts that strain infrastructure and ecosystems, making recovery from natural disasters more difficult.
The effects are already visible in global land data. More than 150 million hectares [1] have burned in wildfires during the first months of 2026. Experts said this scale of destruction is linked to the intensifying cycle of heat and dryness driven by the current climate state.
Redmond-King said the phenomenon does not create climate change, but it magnifies the results. The resulting precipitation shifts can lead to flooding in some regions while leaving others in extreme drought, further destabilizing food and water security.
“El Niño is "pouring fuel on that particular fire" of climate change.”
The convergence of a strong El Niño event with long-term global warming creates a 'force multiplier' effect. While El Niño is a naturally occurring cycle, its impacts are now superimposed on a baseline of higher global temperatures, meaning the resulting weather extremes are more intense than they would be in a stable climate. This increases the risk of systemic failure in agriculture and disaster management worldwide.
