el nino canary islands summer 2026

El Niño returns: What it means for the Canary Islands this summer

Summer arrives with a heat warning

The Canary Islands begin summer today with rising temperatures and a three-month forecast that predicts more heat and rain than usual. This year, the season starts under the shadow of an old acquaintance: El Niño.

This phenomenon, a natural part of the Pacific Ocean’s climate variability, could intensify from July onwards, potentially leading to greater global warming – and the Canary Islands may not be spared. More a possibility than a certainty, however, because despite its potential planetary impact, it remains extremely difficult to predict how El Niño will influence the archipelago, or even whether it will at all.

What El Niño’s return does bring is the ability, together with climate change, to add uncertainty when forecasting how thermometers will behave this summer in the islands. And this summer begins already under the threat of fire. The General Secretariat for Civil Protection and Emergencies has maintained a high-temperature alert from Sunday 21 June until at least Wednesday 24 June, urging caution over the risk of forest fires as temperatures are expected to rise across the archipelago.

What is El Niño and how does it work?

El Niño and La Niña are the two opposing phases of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. It is a natural mode of climate variability that develops in the tropical Pacific but can influence the global atmosphere.

Under normal conditions, trade winds blow from east to west along the equator. These winds push warm surface waters towards the western Pacific, near Indonesia and Australia, while colder, deeper waters rise in the eastern Pacific off South America. This upwelling of cold water keeps the eastern Pacific surface relatively cool. During El Niño, the warm phase, the trade winds weaken. As this westward ‘push’ weakens, warm waters shift towards the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. As a result, the upwelling of cold water off South America decreases and sea surface temperatures rise in the El Niño region.

An unclear but worrying link to the Canary Islands

Science has detected that this rise in sea temperatures produces direct effects – or ‘teleconnections’ – in some parts of the world, causing droughts in some regions and monsoon rains in others. However, in the Canary Islands, a clear impact has never been conclusively established, although most experts agree that in years when El Niño appears, it tends to be considerably hotter.

This year, the planet expects El Niño to make its presence felt between July and August. International bulletins from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) estimate an 80% probability that El Niño will form during these summer months, with probabilities close to or above 90% that it will persist into the following months. However, this also means that “there is a 20% chance it could fizzle out and remain in a neutral state,” says Borja Aguiar, an oceanographer at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) and an ENSO expert.

A potentially intense El Niño on the horizon

WMO predictions also point towards a more intense El Niño, with some predictive models showing that temperatures in the region could exceed two degrees above normal. “The most severe El Niños have been above 2 degrees, such as in 1982, 1997, 1998 and 2016,” explains Aguiar. The last time El Niño showed its face was between 2023 and 2024. “It came right to the door of 2 degrees,” Aguiar summarises.

However, its combined effect with climate change was intense enough to produce the warmest years on record for the planet. The Canary Islands were no exception. 2023 was the warmest year on record and saw one of the most voracious wildfires in the archipelago’s history.

Correlation or coincidence?

Despite this, the relationship still appears more coincidental – or the result of other climatic forces – than causal. “We can say that in other El Niño events there has been more or less rain, or more or fewer calima events, but we don’t see a recurrence in all cases that would allow us to establish a direct connection,” insists the ULPGC researcher.

In any case, as he stresses, “the Canary Islands can indeed be affected” by this climatic situation, though we won’t know the effect “until El Niño is in a developmental state” – that is, until it finishes forming in July or August. Moreover, as he points out, any prediction is complicated by the effect of climate change. “It is an element that comes into play within the natural variability of the atmosphere, and it has an effect on atmospheric dynamics, making prediction much more difficult.”

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