El Niño 2026

What to know about climate and humanitarian impacts

Flooded roads after Hurricane Idalia hit the Tampa Bay region of Florida in August 2023.
Photo credit: © 2023 Feeding Tampa Bay
Climate

El Niño is a weather phenomenon that begins in the Pacific Ocean, but its effects on ocean temperatures and winds can shift rainfall and weather thousands of miles away.

In some places, El Niño can increase the likelihood of drought and extreme heat. In others, it can bring heavier rain, flooding, or storms. These changes can affect crops, food prices, water supplies, health, and people’s ability to earn a living.

For families already facing hunger, poverty, conflict, and climate shocks, the impacts of major weather shifts can make daily life even harder.

CARE works with communities and local partners around the world to prepare for climate-related risks, respond when emergencies happen, and strengthen people’s ability to withstand future crises. Women and girls are particularly important to this work because shocks can deepen inequalities they already face, and because women are often the ones responding first to disasters and providing solutions in their communities.

What is El Niño?

El Niño is the warm phase of a climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. During this warm phase, surface waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean heat up. At the same time, changes in winds and air pressure shift how heat and moisture usually move through the atmosphere. These changes can shift weather patterns far beyond the Pacific Ocean.

El Niño doesn’t cause the same weather everywhere. Instead, it makes certain weather conditions more likely in particular places and during particular seasons. This means that one region might face severe droughts while another might experience unusually heavy rain and flooding.

What is happening with El Niño in 2026-2027?

According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, El Niño is expected to keep strengthening through the end of 2026. As of its mid-August update, there’s more than a 90% chance of a very strong event this fall and winter — and a 69% chance that the October–December event will be more intense than any El Niño on record since 1950.

A stronger El Niño can have wider-reaching effects, but its strength alone cannot tell us exactly what will happen in any particular country. Local weather patterns and other climate conditions also matter.

How does El Niño affect the weather?

El Niño can disrupt normal rainfall and temperature patterns across large parts of the world. Its impacts can include:

  • Drought, which can reduce harvests and water supplies
  • Heavy rain and flooding, which can damage homes, crops, roads, and other infrastructure
  • Extreme heat, which can affect health, agriculture, and access to water
  • Changes in storms, including the intensity of tropical storms and cyclones in some areas

The existence of an El Niño does not guarantee any of these outcomes. Instead, it changes the likelihood of certain weather patterns appearing.

How does El Niño affect hunger and poverty?

El Niño can increase the likelihood of extreme weather events that put added pressure on families and communities. El Niño does not necessarily cause a humanitarian crisis on its own. Instead, drought, flooding, extreme heat, and other weather shocks can deepen existing challenges like hunger and poverty or push families who are already struggling into crisis.

When rains fail, farmers may be able to harvest less food or valuable livestock may die. When floods hit, families can lose crops, homes, businesses, access to clean water, and more. Damage to roads, markets, and other infrastructure can make food harder to reach and more expensive to buy.

These impacts are especially serious for people who already have fewer resources. A family spending most of its income on food may have to eat less or cut other essential expenses when grain prices rise. A farmer recovering from a previous drought may lose another harvest and have no money left to buy seeds for the next season. And when flooding closes roads or damages local markets, families may find that basic goods are both harder to find and more expensive than before.

That is how a climate shock can become a hunger and poverty crisis: by disrupting the food, income, water, and services families depend on, and leaving those with the fewest resources with even fewer options.

El Niño vs. La Niña: What’s the difference?

El Niño and La Niña are opposite phases of the same climate cycle.

During El Niño, parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean become warmer than usual.

During La Niña, those waters cool down, becoming colder than usual.

Both can shift weather patterns around the world, but they often have different effects on rainfall and temperature.

Between the two is an ENSO-neutral period, where conditions fall into neither the El Niño or La Niña patterns.

Where does El Niño have the biggest impacts?

El Niño affects different parts of the world in different ways. Its impacts also change from one season to the next.

Some regions where CARE works are very likely to face increased risks during El Niño, including:

Parts of East Africa can experience heavier rainfall than usual during El Niño, raising the risk of flooding.

Floods can destroy homes, crops, infrastructure, and more. Floodwaters can contaminate water supplies, damage health systems and interrupt health services, and force families from their homes.

Communities may also still be recovering from earlier droughts, ongoing conflict, and other issues when heavy rains arrive, making it more difficult for them to rebuild afterwards.

El Niño can lead to less rainfall and droughts in parts of Southern Africa.

For farming communities, a dry rainy season can mean smaller harvests, less water for livestock, lost income, and higher food prices.

Families that depend on rain-fed agriculture may have fewer crops to eat, sell, or save for the next planting season.

If dry conditions continue, water shortages can put added pressure on households, livestock, food supplies, and local water sources.

Parts of South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific can experience hotter and drier conditions during El Niño. Conversely, other locations in the same regions may face heavy rainfall.

Changes in seasonal rain can be especially disruptive for people whose food and income depend on farming, fishing, or raising livestock. Droughts can reduce crop yields, limit water for animals, and affect fisheries. Heavy rainfall and flooding can damage farms, homes, roads, and local markets.

In Central America, particularly in the Dry Corridor, and parts of the Caribbean, El Niño is often linked to lower and more irregular rainfall. This can disrupt planting and harvest seasons, reduce crop yields, strain water supplies, and make it harder for agricultural families to earn an income.

Parts of northern South America can face drier conditions and a higher risk of wildfires. Farther south, areas may experience above-average rainfall, increasing the risk of flooding and damage to homes, roads, and markets.

Why are women and girls especially affected by El Niño?

El Niño affects everyone exposed to droughts, floods, heat, and other weather shocks. But existing inequalities can make the consequences more severe for women and girls.

Women play a major role in producing food, collecting water, caring for family members, and supporting household incomes. Yet they often have less access to land, financing, technology, climate information, and decision-making power. These inequalities can leave women more exposed to hunger and less able to recover when climate shocks disrupt food and livelihoods.

The effects can reach far beyond a lost harvest.

During droughts, women and girls may have to walk much farther to find water, taking time away from school, work, or other responsibilities and sometimes exposing them to additional safety risks. When families lose crops, livestock, or income, girls may be pulled out of school, and the risk of child, early, and forced marriage can increase. Child marriage often rises sharply in crisis settings, including during natural disasters, as families cope with deepening poverty and insecurity.

Crises can also increase the risk of violence against women and girls.

El Niño years often bring record-breaking heat, which can impact women differently. Pregnant women are especially vulnerable, since their bodies must work harder to stay cool — extreme heat exposure during pregnancy is linked to higher risks of preterm birth, low birth weight, and stillbirth. Women are also more likely to face heat with less protection: farming in open fields, cooking over open flames in unventilated kitchens, and carrying out unpaid care work during the hottest hours of the day, often with little access to shade, water, or cooling. These overlapping risks mean extreme heat can threaten women’s health even when it doesn’t make headlines the way a flood or drought does.

Women and girls are also leading the solutions to these issues. They are farmers, business owners, community leaders, first responders, and experts on the needs of their communities. CARE works to ensure women have access to resources, information, services, and decision-making power so they can help shape how communities prepare for El Niño and other crises.

The installation of reliable water points, like this one in Maua in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, can help crisis-affected communities access clean water in emergencies. Photo credit: © 2026 Terica Vilanculo / CARE

How does CARE respond to El Niño?

CARE works with local partners and communities before, during, and after climate-related emergencies.

Our work can include:

  • Early planning: Weather forecasts can provide communities to protect livelihoods, prepare water supplies, strengthen local emergency preparedness plans, and get assistance in place before conditions worsen.
  • Responding to urgent needs: When droughts, floods, or other emergencies hit, CARE and its partners help families meet needs like access to food, clean water, safe shelter, health services, and other essential considerations. Depending on the crisis, this can include cash and voucher assistance to give people more choices about what their families need most.
  • Protecting livelihoods: CARE works with farmers and communities to strengthen food systems, conserve water, improve access to information, and adapt livelihoods to be more resilient in the face of changing environmental conditions.
  • Supporting locally led solutions: Local organizations are often among the first to understand changing risks and respond to emergencies. CARE works with local and women-led partners, so communities have a stronger voice in the decisions that affect them.

Can communities prepare for El Niño?

Yes! One important difference between the impacts of El Niño and many other sudden disasters is that scientists and researchers can often see it developing months before the strongest effects hit.

This creates an important opportunity to act early.

Forecasts can help communities, governments, and humanitarian organizations like CARE prepare for drought, flooding, food shortages, and other potential impacts before they become emergencies. That can mean protecting livestock, preparing water systems, distributing drought-tolerant seeds or other farming supplies, strengthening evacuation plans, and helping families protect their homes and livelihoods.

Humanitarian organizations can also pre-position supplies and resources in places likely to be affected, so food, clean water, shelter materials, and other assistance can reach people more quickly if a crisis develops. Funding can be arranged in advance, local partners can prepare response plans, and systems for delivering cash or other assistance can be put in place before needs become urgent.

Forecasts and planning cannot prevent extreme weather, but acting early can help families protect their health, livelihoods, and resources, and can make it possible to respond faster when conditions worsen.

How can I help people affected by El Niño?

El Niño can make life harder for families already experiencing hunger, poverty, conflict, and other emergencies.

A donation to CARE helps support lifesaving humanitarian assistance as well as long-term work helping communities prepare for climate shocks and recover when disasters happen.

*Last updated September 2026