In June 2026 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its latest outlook, putting the chance that El Niño conditions emerge in the Pacific at 80% for June through August and a higher 90% thereafter. Nearly all international models point to a "strong" or greater event, and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) warns that, in its most extreme scenario, the event could exceed any historical precedent. Latin America, where the risks of drought and flooding cut across one another, is one of the regions most exposed.
What Is Certain, and What Is Only Possible
The first thing to keep straight is the difference in confidence. What the WMO gave is a probability: 80% for June–August, rising to 90% afterward. The previous El Niño, in 2023–24, ranked among the strongest on record, but whether this one will surpass it and reach a "1997–98 level, or beyond" remains, for now, a matter of forecast and possibility. The JRC's own analysis uses hedged language—"a very high likelihood of being very strong and even turning into an unprecedented event"—rather than a flat assertion. Climate is best discussed in probabilities, and it matters not to confuse the worst-case scenario with the most likely one.
Where It Dries, Where It Floods
El Niño does not affect Latin America uniformly. As a rule, Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and others) and the northern Andes, including Colombia and Ecuador, face heightened drought risk, while southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and northeastern Argentina tend to see elevated risk of excess rain and flooding. The same "El Niño" can require opposite preparations—against drought in one country, against floods in another.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have already sounded the alarm over food-security risks in Central America's "Dry Corridor" (Corredor Seco), issuing a forward-looking anticipatory-action appeal running from June 2026. In this belt of smallholder farmers, a single failed harvest can mean the collapse of a livelihood and can become a push factor for migration. The JRC singles out Ecuador, Venezuela and Haiti as cases where dry conditions are expected to compound pre-existing crises and worsen the humanitarian outlook.
The Panama Canal's "Return of the Risk"
The Panama Canal is a textbook case of a climate story turning into an economic one. During the 2023–24 El Niño, the level of Gatún Lake, the canal's water source, fell at one point to roughly 79–80 feet. Authorities cut the usual transit rate of about 36 ships a day down to 24 and tightened draft (how deep a ship sits) limits. The episode left a clear mark on global shipping costs and supply chains.
Rains then returned, and Gatún Lake recovered to near full pool. The canal authority reported that fiscal 2025 (FY2025) revenue reached about US$5.7 billion, up 14.4% year on year, with transits also rebounding strongly. That is precisely why, faced with this high-probability outlook, markets are again starting to price in "Panama Canal risk." When maritime media turned their attention back to the canal in April 2026, prompted by the U.S. NOAA's "El Niño Watch," it was a sign of the same anxiety. Even a moderate El Niño could tighten the rainy-season water balance enough to send the price of priority-transit slots soaring.
A Chain Reaction Across Food, Water and Power
The impact does not stop at the canal. Many Latin American countries—Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru—rely on hydropower for much of their electricity, so falling river flows tend to translate directly into power crises. During the 2023–24 El Niño, both Colombia and Ecuador imposed electricity-use restrictions and rolling blackouts.
Agriculture is the same story. Colombia's coffee and Ecuador's cacao are sensitive to swings in rainfall, and poor harvests ripple out to international commodity prices. Brazil, for its part, could shoulder drought risk in its north and east and heavy-rain risk in its south at the same time. El Niño shows up not as a single bout of bad weather but as a compound risk linking water, food and energy.
The Author's View
What strikes me most about this news is not the headline phrase "possibly the strongest on record" but the distribution behind that probability—which societies it hits hardest. The same drought means something entirely different in a society with irrigation, reserves and the slack to ride out blackouts than in one where a farmer loses a livelihood to a single failed harvest. The fact that the FAO and JRC named the "Dry Corridor" and countries already in crisis so early is, I suspect, because they know damage is decided not only by the strength of the weather but by social vulnerability.
For that reason, I'd rather not be pulled too far into the record-chasing question of "will it beat 1997–98?" What matters is fearing the worst case correctly while letting each country act ahead of time within the most likely range. El Niño is a climate phenomenon, but it is also a test that reveals a region's preparedness and its inequalities—and that, I think, is the healthy way to read this warning.
Glossary
El Niño is the phenomenon in which sea-surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific run warmer than normal, swaying weather worldwide over a span of months. The opposite cooling phase is called La Niña, and together the two are known as ENSO (the El Niño–Southern Oscillation). The Dry Corridor (Corredor Seco in Spanish) is the drought-prone farming belt stretching from Guatemala to Nicaragua, and it becomes the front line of food crisis with each El Niño.
El Niño is a climate phenomenon, but it is also a test that reveals a region's preparedness and its inequalities.
References
- UN News: WMOがエルニーニョを確認、異常気象の増加を警告 — news.un.org
- WMO: エルニーニョに備えよ — wmo.int
- JRC: 前例なき規模となりうるエルニーニョ、人道的打撃を分析が示す — ec.europa.eu
- FAO: FAO・WFP合同の事前行動アピール（2026年6月〜2027年3月） — fao.org
- gCaptain: エルニーニョ・ウォッチで再び注目されるパナマ運河 — gcaptain.com
- gCaptain: パナマ運河、FY2025の収入57億ドル・通航19%増 — gcaptain.com
- EIA: 干ばつの緩和でパナマ運河の通航が回復 — eia.gov
※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.