The Pacific’s El Niño-Southern Oscillation Climate Powerhouse

Written by Dr. Matthew Wielicki on January 13, 2026. Posted in Current News

If you’ve followed my work on Irrational Fear, you know I’ve spent considerable time debunking the hype around the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). In articles like “AMOC Collapse? Think Again—The Florida Current’s Stability Defies Climate Predictions” and “Is the Latest AMOC ‘Collapse’ Paper Scientific Fraud?”, I’ve shown how models predict doom while real-world measurements tell a stable story

Similarly, in “AMOC: Models Say Collapse, Measurements Do Not” and “The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)”, I highlight how the IPCC itself acknowledges that there’s no observational evidence of a trend in the AMOC, yet alarmists continue to push collapse narratives.

However, while the Atlantic receives an endless media spotlight, the Pacific Ocean, covering nearly half of the Earth’s surface, drives far more significant climate variability through the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

This massive system influences global temperatures, weather patterns, and ecosystems, often overshadowing the gradual effects of greenhouse gases. Today, we’ll dive into ENSO, why it’s overlooked (hint: you can’t tax the oceans), and what its recent shifts mean for us.

What is ENSO? A Simple Breakdown

To understand ENSO, let’s start with the basics – no advanced physics required, just some ocean and atmosphere fundamentals. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation is a natural climate pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean that flips between three phases: El Niño (warm), La Niña (cool), and neutral.

It’s driven by interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere, specifically trade winds, sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and air pressure differences.

Here’s how it works: Normally, strong easterly trade winds blow from east to west across the equatorial Pacific, pushing warm surface water toward Asia and Australia. This causes cooler water to upwell (rise from deeper layers) along the South American coast, rich in nutrients that support marine life.

But every two to seven years, these winds weaken or reverse. During El Niño, the warm water sloshes back eastward, warming the central and eastern Pacific. This suppresses upwelling, leading to warmer global temperatures overall.

Conversely, during La Niña, the trade winds strengthen, piling even more warm water in the west and enhancing cool upwelling in the east, which tends to cool the planet slightly. The “Southern Oscillation” part refers to the seesaw in air pressure between the eastern Pacific (high pressure) and western Pacific/Indian Ocean (low pressure) that accompanies these shifts.

Why does it change? It’s a self-regulating cycle influenced by factors like wind bursts, ocean heat content, and even distant weather patterns. Think of it as the ocean “burping” excess heat – El Niño releases stored heat from the Pacific into the atmosphere, spiking global temps, while La Niña stores it away.

Unlike the slow, debated changes in the AMOC, ENSO flips dramatically and unpredictably, making it a dominant short-term climate driver.

The Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) chart below illustrates this beautifully.

It shows the 3-month running mean of Niño 3.4 SST anomalies from 1950 to 2025, with red bars for El Niño (positive anomalies above +0.5°C) and blue for La Niña (below -0.5°C).

You can see major El Niño events in 1982-83, 1997-98, 2015-16, and 2023-24, interspersed with La Niña periods like the triple-dip from 2020-23. The chart highlights how ENSO has oscillated without a clear long-term trend tied to human activity… it’s nature’s rhythm.

ENSO and Temperature Spikes: The Real Culprit Behind “Record Heat”

Look at the UAH satellite-based global lower atmosphere temperature graph below (Version 6.1), showing anomalies from 1979 to December 2025.

Notice the sharp spikes? The massive 1997-98 El Niño caused a huge temperature jump in 1998, often cited as a “record” year. Similarly, the super El Niño of 2015-16 drove 2016’s heat, and the 2023-24 event correlated with 2023’s “hottest year ever” claims.

These aren’t coincidences. El Niño releases vast amounts of ocean heat into the atmosphere, far outpacing the (alleged – Ed) subtle warming from increasing ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHGs).

The IPCC and mainstream narratives conveniently downplay this because, after all, how do you tax or regulate the oceans? Institutions like the IPCC focus on ‘GHGs’ as the “sole driver” of ‘climate change’, but that’s a myopic view. ENSO can swing global temps by 0.2-0.5°C in months.

The Pacific’s sheer size means its oscillations have a larger, more immediate impact on climate variability than CO2 alone. If ‘GHGs’ were the only factor, we’d see steady rises without these jagged spikes – but the data shows otherwise.

This oversight exposes how the climate crisis narrative cherry-picks data to justify policies that expand power and wealth, ignoring natural drivers like ENSO that don’t fit the agenda.

What ENSO Phases Mean for the US and the Globe

A shift between El Niño and La Niña reshapes weather worldwide. Globally, El Niño often brings warmer, drier conditions to parts of Asia and Australia (increasing drought and fire risk), heavier rains to South America, and altered hurricane seasons – fewer in the Atlantic but more in the Pacific.

It can exacerbate warming temporarily, leading to heatwaves, coral bleaching, and disrupted fisheries (e.g., Peru’s anchovy collapse during strong events).

Source: climate.gov

La Niña flips this: wetter in Southeast Asia, drier in the southern US and eastern Africa (famine risks), and more Atlantic hurricanes.

Source: climate.gov

For the continental US, impacts peak in winter. During El Niño, the jet stream shifts south, bringing wetter, stormier weather to California and the South (sometimes flooding), while the North stays drier and warmer.

La Niña does the opposite: drier South (drought in Texas, wildfires in the West), wetter Northwest, and colder Northeast. These aren’t absolutes – other factors like the Arctic Oscillation play in – but ENSO explains much of our year-to-year variability.

From NOAA: “ENSO influences sea surface temperature, rainfall, air pressure, atmospheric and ocean circulation,” affecting everything from agriculture to energy demands.

The Rapid Collapse of La Niña: What’s Next?

According to the Climate Prediction Center’s latest ENSO update from January 5, 2026, we are currently in a La Niña phase, with the ENSO Alert System Status set to La Niña Advisory.

Equatorial SSTs are below average across the east-central and eastern Pacific, and atmospheric anomalies are consistent with La Niña. The latest weekly SST departures include Niño 3.4 at -0.5°C, confirming borderline conditions.

However, signs of weakening are evident: subsurface temperature anomalies have turned slightly positive recently, with above-average temperatures strengthening in the western Pacific and expanding eastward to the east-central Pacific.

This indicates a rapid dissipation of the cool phase, as below-average subsurface temperatures weakened over the last couple of months.

La Niña is favored to continue for the next month or two, but a transition to ENSO-neutral is most likely in January-March 2026, with a 68 percent chance according to the CPC probabilistic outlook.

Models from the Columbia Climate School support this: most predict La Niña persisting through Northern Hemisphere winter 2025-26 before shifting to neutral by early 2026. The IRI model plume shows a clear upward trend in Niño 3.4 anomalies, crossing into neutral territory soon.

Source: columbia.edu

This quick shift to neutral or potentially El Niño could mean warmer global temps in late 2026, wetter US South, reduced Atlantic hurricanes, but heightened Pacific storm risks. If it strengthens into a full El Niño, expect another temperature spike – more “record heat” headlines blaming ‘GHGs’, ignoring the ocean’s role.

This rapid change underscores ENSO’s power: it’s not a gradual ‘GHG’ creep but a dynamic force that can dominate climate signals. The subsurface warming noted in the CPC update suggests the “collapse” of La Niña is underway, aligning with observations of westerly wind anomalies and strengthened positive subsurface heat.

Final words…

In closing, ENSO reminds us climate is complex, not a simple CO2 knob. By fixating on ‘greenhouse gases’ as the sole driver, we’re missing the ocean’s massive influence – and that’s no accident in a narrative built on control.

See more here substack.com

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