What is El Niño?
El Niño is a natural climate pattern that originates in the tropical Pacific Ocean. It occurs when trade winds weaken, allowing warm surface water to shift eastward, which disrupts normal ocean–atmosphere circulation and alters weather patterns globally.

Is El Niño caused by climate change?
No. Scientific assessments, including the IPCC, state that El Niño is part of Earth’s natural climate variability. It has been occurring for centuries, long before human-driven greenhouse gas emissions.

What evidence shows it is natural?
 Paleoclimate records such as tree rings, coral data, and historical reconstructions show recurring El Niño events well before the industrial era. These records confirm that the phenomenon predates modern climate change.

Has climate change changed El Niño itself?
There is no clear scientific consensus that climate change has increased the frequency or fundamentally altered El Niño. Research is ongoing, but current evidence does not establish a direct causal link.

Why do El Niño years still break temperature records?
El Niño releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere. When combined with an already warmer global background due to climate change, it can push global temperatures to new highs—but it does not create the warming trend itself.

El Niño is a natural climate cycle. Climate change does not cause it, but it can intensify the impacts when it occurs.