Study: El Niño Events in Recent Decades Are The Strongest in 1,000 Years

Are stronger El Niño events proof of human-caused climate change or simply the result of natural variability?
Study: El Niño Events in Recent Decades Are The Strongest in 1,000 Years
Above: A red rock crab in Tortuga Bay at Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos archipelago, Ecuador, on June 26, 2023. Image credit: Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images

The Spin


Climate-concerned narrative

Coral records from the Galápagos make it clear — El Niño events are stronger now than at any point in the past 1,000 years, and human-caused warming is driving that shift. Stronger El Niños mean more devastating droughts, floods and economic losses, and the world needs to start preparing for that reality.

Climate-skeptic narrative

The conflation of El Niño variability and climate alarmism is reaching absurd levels of discourse. There needs to be a much more vigorous challenging of climate activist science and "journalism" in the public arena.

Narrative C

The Galápagos coral study is interesting data, but the leap to blaming human warming is a stretch the evidence doesn't fully support. The IPCC itself concluded there is no consensus from models on a systematic change in El Niño sea surface temperature variability, and large model ensembles found no historical trends distinguishable from internal variability.


Metaculus Prediction

There is a 50% chance that the average global surface air temperature in 2026 relative to the pre-industrial baseline will be at least 1.47 °C, according to the Metaculus prediction community.


Public Figures


The Controversies



Go Deeper

© 2026 Improve the News Foundation. All rights reserved.Version 7.4.1

© 2026 Improve the News Foundation.

All rights reserved.

Version 7.4.1