How we know this year’s El Niño is going to be big | If You're Listening Oct 22, 2026

Description

Toxic smoke haze is blanketing Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, after weeks of fires in Indonesia. In central Chile, flash flooding has trapped people on their roofs, and already Australia’s spring is unusually hot and dry. Scientists have confirmed it’s an El Niño year, and it’s expected to be one of the worst on record, tipping the odds for these extreme weather events.

But we haven’t always had this warning — in 1982 there was a whole heap of apocalyptic weather, and no unifying theory to bring it all together. That “super El Niño” would totally change how we think about forecasting the weather. Now climate change threatens to send us back to the 1980s.

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