Does UN's El Niño warning for June-August threaten extreme weather this summer?

The El Niño weather is developing this summer with the UN’s weather and climate agency issuing a stark warning.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) which said on Tuesday, June 2, that extreme weather is expected, the El Niño phenomenon is expected to cause extreme weather around the globe this summer.

Scientists say this climate change will further cast the impact as severe.

As per the WMO update, “There is an 80% chance that an El Nino phenomenon emerges between the months of June and August."

There’s a more worrying sign in this forecast, and that is it will not end until November of 2026.

The statement read, “Fueled by unusually warm ocean waters in the tropical Pacific, El Nino conditions are developing and are set to influence global temperature and rainfall patterns,” per UN’s agency on weather and climate, WMO.

Forecasts from the WMO global network “indicate a pronounced shift toward El Nino conditions, with probabilities reaching 80% for June-August,” said the Geneva-based world climate body.

What is El Niño?

El Niño is a phenomenon caused by the climate change that heats up surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, resulting in changes in global weather patterns: winds, pressure and rainfall.

This weather pattern occurs every two to seven years and lasts until September or in extreme cases, stretches to December.

Although the conditions fluctuate between El Niño and its opposite La Niña, with neutral intervals in between.