Charles Rotter
The headline writers have been busy. A glance at the climate press for the past month produces, in no particular order:
“Atmospheric Code Red: 2026 Super El Niño Now Trending Toward Record-Breaking Intensity” (Severe Weather Europe)
“The ‘Godzilla’ El Nino Is Coming: This Version Is Something the World Has Never Seen Before” (Open Magazine)
“How a monster ocean heatwave could fuel a super El Niño” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
“‘Super El Niño’ Looming Amid La Niña Dwindling Prior To Peak Of 2026 Hurricane Season” (Daily Caller)
“The 2026 El Niño is developing unusually fast and may rival the strongest ever recorded” (Down to Earth)
“A rare ‘super’ El Niño is looking more likely. Here’s what to expect” (Fortune)
The actual present condition of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, according to the people whose job it is to monitor the equatorial Pacific Ocean, is ENSO-neutral. That is the official NOAA Climate Prediction Center finding as of the most recent ENSO Diagnostic Discussion. Sea surface temperature anomalies are above average in places but the coupled ocean-atmosphere system has not yet flipped. El Niño Watch is in effect. The next monthly discussion is scheduled for tomorrow, June 11, and may or may not move the numbers.
Between the neutral conditions in the actual Pacific and the Godzilla-class headlines about the Pacific, there is some daylight that deserves an examination.
A Brief History of Climate Godzilla
The naming convention for strong El Niño events follows the inflation rules of a poorly managed currency. We started with “El Niño,” which is the meteorological name. Then came “strong El Niño” for the bigger ones. Then “very strong El Niño.” Then “Super El Niño.” Then, briefly, “Bruce Lee El Niño,” coined by a few outlets in the mid-2010s before being quietly retired for reasons one can imagine. Then in 2015 we arrived at “Godzilla El Niño,” attributed to a NASA scientist, picked up by every outlet on earth, and applied to the 2015-16 event.
The 2015-16 Godzilla was supposed to be epic. The Pacific was warming hard. The headlines did what the headlines do. California, then in the middle of a four-year drought, was promised relief that would arrive in winter rains of biblical proportions, and was also told that this was the new normal, that the El Niño was the relief, and that the relief would also be cataclysmic. This was the genre.
What happened next is worth remembering. The 2015-16 event peaked near-record by traditional Oceanic Niño Index measures, produced moderate atmospheric coupling, delivered modest impacts in California (some rain, not enough to end the drought), and contributed to a record-warm year that was indistinguishable in the long-term record from the existing warming trend. In June 2016, NOAA’s Mike Halpert formally pronounced the Godzilla dead: There’s nothing left. Stick a fork in it, it’s done.
That was Godzilla 1, or Godzilla 3 if one counts the 1997-98 event as Godzilla 0 and the 1982-83 event as proto-Godzilla. The franchise has been rebooted regularly. We are now on Godzilla 2026, currently being prepared for theatrical release.
What NOAA Actually Says
The current ENSO Diagnostic Discussion is helpful for separating the meteorology from the press. The May 2026 discussion confirms that El Niño is likely to emerge: 82% chance in the May-July period, 96% chance for the December 2026 to February 2027 winter. That part is in nearly every press story.
What is in almost none of the press stories is the next paragraph. NOAA notes that confidence in El Niño occurring has gone up, but adds a sentence that the press would benefit from reading:
There is still substantial uncertainty in the peak strength of El Niño, with no strength categorization exceeding a 37% chance.
Read that again, because the press did not. NOAA is saying: we are quite confident that some El Niño will emerge. We have low confidence in how strong it will be. No strength category, not weak, not moderate, not strong, not very strong, has more than a 37% probability assigned to it. That is not a forecast for a Godzilla. That is a forecast for “we will have an El Niño, and we will tell you how strong it is when we know.”
The Climate Prediction Center also notes, drily, that stronger El Niño events do not ensure strong impacts. They only ensure the conditions under which strong impacts can develop. Whether the atmosphere actually couples to the warm anomaly in the way that produces real downstream weather effects depends on a separate set of summer dynamics that have not yet played out. The 2015-16 Godzilla peaked at near-record SST anomaly but produced atmospheric coupling that was, in retrospect, ordinary.
The Spring Predictability Barrier
There is a real reason why all of this is more uncertain than the headline percentages suggest. It is called the spring predictability barrier. ENSO forecasts made in late spring have systematically larger errors than forecasts made in late summer or fall. The barrier reflects the seasonal dynamics of the equatorial Pacific, which is more chaotic between approximately April and June than at other times of the year.
The peak of the developing El Niño, in the current forecast cycle, is not expected to arrive until November or December. The reliable forecast for that peak will not be available until late summer. The Godzilla headlines being run in May and early June are operating in the worst part of the predictability window. Michelle L’Heureux, who runs the CPC ENSO team, has noted this in nearly every recent forecast update. The headlines have not picked it up.
The Relative ONI Quiet Downgrade
One more wrinkle, which the press has not picked up at all. In February 2026, NOAA formally shifted to using the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, or RONI, as the primary tropical Pacific anomaly measure. RONI computes the Niño 3.4 anomaly relative to the tropical mean rather than against a fixed historical baseline.
The change matters. The entire tropical ocean has warmed alongside the rest of the planet. If you compare Niño 3.4 against a fixed 1991-2020 baseline, you get a larger anomaly than if you compare it against a tropical baseline that has also warmed. The relative anomaly is what actually drives atmospheric coupling and downstream weather impacts. The fixed anomaly is the headline number that lets a writer say “the warmest ever recorded.”
By moving to RONI, NOAA has quietly downgraded the apparent strength of recent El Niños relative to the fixed-baseline numbers that journalists are still using. The ONI-above-3 figures in the press are the old-style fixed-baseline anomalies. The relative anomalies, which the meteorology actually responds to, are smaller. Almost no one outside the agency has updated their copy.
The Adjective Inventory
For the record, the inventory of modifiers the climate press has deployed for the still-not-quite-arrived 2026 El Niño so far this year includes:
Super. Mega. Monster. Godzilla. Code Red. Looming. Historic. Record-breaking. Unprecedented. Rapid-fire. Catastrophic. Dangerous. Cataclysmic. Apocalyptic. Devastating. Dramatic. Atmospheric. Coming. Imminent. Building. Brewing. Threatening.
The Down to Earth article goes further and compares the predicted 2026 El Niño to the 1876-78 super event, helpfully noting that the 1876 event “was one of the primary reasons for a global famine that killed around 50 million people.” This is the kind of comparison that puts a forecast in context. The context being that a Victorian-era subsistence agricultural system without modern irrigation, transportation, refrigeration, weather forecasting, or international food markets had a hard time with extreme weather. The implication, in 2026, with all of those things, is left to the reader.
By Godzilla 2030 we will need new adjectives. May I propose: Hyper-Saiyan El Niño. Final Form El Niño. Director’s Cut Extended Edition El Niño. The Multiverse of El Niño. El Niño Endgame. El Niño Begins.
The Daily Caller informed its readers this week that the La Niña pattern is “conking out,” which is a verb the AP Style Guide does not recognize but probably should. La Niña is dwindling. La Niña is fading. La Niña is going gentle into that good night. The Pacific Ocean has been anthropomorphized into a household appliance. We are doing okay as a civilization.
What This Is Actually About
There will probably be an El Niño. It will probably emerge in the next few months. It will probably peak in late 2026 or early 2027. It might be strong. It might be moderate. It might fizzle. NOAA, which is the agency that produces the official forecast, has placed no strength category above 37% probability. The press is leading with the 30-some-percent chance that it will be unprecedented, while declining to mention the 60-some-percent chance that it will be unremarkable.
The 2015-16 Godzilla was supposed to be unprecedented. It produced an above-average impact season, no civilizational collapse, and an end to the franchise that lasted about three years before the next reboot. The 1997-98 event before it was similar. The press cycle for each was identical to the one we are reading now: the headlines led with the worst-case scenarios, the actual events were notable but tractable, and the next cycle began the next time the Pacific warmed.
I am happy to be wrong if 2026-27 turns out to be the worst El Niño of all recorded time. The honest answer is that no one knows yet, and the people most qualified to know are openly saying so. NOAA’s own discussion says 37%. The press is selling 90%.
Godzilla 2026 is in theaters now. We will see in November whether the franchise needed another sequel.
