Next El Niño could be tipping point for a hotter climate

“These shifts matter because they can turn a short-lived climate shock into a longer-lasting risk,” he wrote. If soil moisture stays below normal for several years, crops are exposed to repeated heat and water stress across multiple growing seasons with “direct consequences for food production and water security.” Adapting to a changing baseline The potential for more destructive physical impacts raises deeper concerns about how societies that developed under relatively stable climate conditions will function in a world with shifting baselines and sharper swings between droughts and floods, more intense tropical storms, expanded fire seasons and long-lasting unseasonal extreme heat. Understanding how stronger El Niños reshape the climate can help countries close what the United Nations calls the global adaptation gap, which is the widening distance between known climate risks and actual preparation. VIDEO El Niño is the warm phase of a cyclical temperature shift in the tropical Pacific Ocean that can have immediate impacts, like the collapse of life-sustaining coastal fisheries and widespread coral reef die-offs, as well as impacts on land, including devastating flooding and extreme heatwaves. The U.N. Environment Programme’s 2025 Adaptation Gap Report found that international public adaptation finance fell slightly to $26 billion in 2023, even as the cost of climate impacts rises sharply. …