India’s southwest monsoon closed on September 30 as its weakest in more than a decade, and the weather pattern widely blamed for it is not finished. The US Climate Prediction Center says El Niño is still strengthening and now gives a better-than-even chance that it will be stronger than any event since records began in 1950. For farmers in Karnataka, shoppers in Delhi, cocoa growers in West Africa and families in Central America’s Dry Corridor, the same ocean-warming is landing in very different ways.

What forecasters are saying

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, in its September 10 discussion, put the chance of a very strong event during the northern hemisphere’s fall and winter of 2026–27 at more than 90 per cent. It gave a 75 per cent chance of a “historic” event in October–December, defined as a three-month index of +2.5°C or more, which would exceed every previous El Niño dating back to 1950. Sea-surface temperature anomalies in the eastern equatorial Pacific were already above +3.0°C. The agency expects El Niño to persist into spring 2027, and its next update is due on October 8.

NOAA is careful on one point that headlines often drop: at this strength, the chance of El Niño-type impacts is larger, though not guaranteed, in any given place. Exeter climate scientist Mat Collins, as relayed by Tempo from Guardian reporting, said Pacific temperatures have reached about 3°C above average, matching the 2015 record, and that this could become the strongest El Niño in the past thousand years. That is one scientist’s view and not an official forecast.

India first: a monsoon that failed unevenly

India received 759.4 mm of rain between June and September against a long-period average of 868.6 mm, a deficit of 12.6 per cent, according to IMD data. The last time the monsoon fell below 90 per cent of normal was 2015, which was also a strong El Niño year, as Rural Voice noted.

The national figure hides sharp regional gaps:

Region	Rainfall vs normal
East and Northeast India	26% below
South Peninsula	24% below
Northwest India	about 6% below
Central India	3% below

Seventeen of 36 meteorological subdivisions, covering 42 per cent of the country’s area, were deficient. Karnataka ended about 35 per cent short, its largest shortfall in several decades, per DSIJ. Drought conditions have been reported in Karnataka, Maharashtra, parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Rajasthan, and preliminary assessments put the affected cropped area at around 6.11 lakh hectares, with some of it hit by a mix of deficient rain and flood damage. A central team was scheduled to visit Karnataka on October 3, and the Agriculture Minister has indicated one will go to Maharashtra.

Total kharif acreage fell by around 1 per cent, but paddy area dropped by about 16.32 lakh hectares. Maize, soybean and cotton areas also fell, while urad, pearl millet, sorghum, sesame, sunflower and pigeon pea rose, a sign of farmers shifting towards crops that need less water. The Centre has set a 2026–27 foodgrain target of 373.93 million tonnes, 2.63 million tonnes below the 376.56 million tonnes produced in 2025–26. Attention now turns to the rabi season, where reservoir levels and soil moisture matter most.

The cushion: record grain stocks

What separates this year from 2023, the last time El Niño curbed India’s rice exports, is the size of the buffer. The US Department of Agriculture’s latest grain circular puts India’s wheat stocks at 50.5 million tonnes on August 1, well above the 27.6 million tonne reserve requirement. Reuters reported in June that world milled rice reserves reached an all-time high of 196.16 million tonnes at the start of 2026, with India, which supplies about 40 per cent of global rice exports, holding stocks around five times its target. One New Delhi-based trader told Reuters the government was therefore unlikely to restrict rice exports. That is a trader’s judgement and not a policy statement, and it was made before the monsoon ended deficient.

The 2023 precedent explains why it matters. India’s export curbs that year sent rice prices to multi-year highs, and Thai white rice hit a 15-year high that December.

Prices and the RBI

Food and fuel are already pushing inflation up. India’s consumer inflation reached 4.82 per cent in August, the highest since December 2024, with food inflation at 5.95 per cent, according to Trading Economics. The Reserve Bank of India held the repo rate at 5.25 per cent in August and projected 5.0 per cent inflation for 2026–27, peaking at 5.9 per cent in the October–December quarter, as summarised by IndiaBonds. It named El Niño, the uneven monsoon and volatile crude among the main risks. The Monetary Policy Committee meets October 5–7, and September’s inflation print is due October 12.

El Niño is landing on top of an energy shock. The IMF’s Annual Report 2026, citing the International Energy Agency, said the Middle East war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz caused “the largest-ever cut to global energy supplies.” Rural Voice reported on October 2 that high gas and sulphur prices could push India’s fertiliser subsidy to Rs 3 lakh crore this financial year.

The world’s kitchen

The UN World Food Programme’s analysis projects that this El Niño could push at least 49 million more people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027, lifting the number of acutely food-insecure people in the 45 countries it modelled from about 225 million to 274 million, or 22 per cent. The 2015–16 El Niño affected the food security of 60 to 100 million people, WFP notes.

Region	WFP projection
Latin America and Caribbean	More than 16 million affected; Central America up 83.1%, the largest proportional rise
East and Southern Africa	More than 18 million, a 26% increase
Asia and the Pacific	About 8.2 million additional people
West and Central Africa	About 6 million, up 12%

In June, FAO and WFP launched their first joint anticipatory-action appeal, seeking $202 million to protect nearly nine million people in 22 high-risk countries before shocks hit. WFP says it has already triggered early plans in Chad, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mauritania, South Sudan and Uganda, with more than $14 million supporting about half a million people.

Coffee, cocoa and cooking oil, with a caution

Consumer prices for tropical goods are the part of El Niño most people will notice. Agricultural economist Nelson Villoria of Kansas State University told CNN that tropical commodities such as palm oil, coconut oil, coffee and fishmeal tend to see the largest increases, and that prices of vegetable oils and coffee can stay elevated for up to a year after an El Niño. CNN notes that experts do not expect food shortages in the United States, only higher prices. India, a large importer of edible oil, is exposed to the commodities he names.

But markets are not following a simple script. Cocoa traded around $5,670 a tonne on October 2, up about 5 per cent on the day, yet still about 8 per cent below a year earlier, according to Trading Economics, which also shows coffee about 26 per cent lower than a year ago. Weather risk is one driver among many, and the lag between a crop shock and a shop price can run for months.

The economic bill

No one has yet put a reliable price on this El Niño. The best benchmark is a 2023 study in Science by Dartmouth researchers Christopher Callahan and Justin Mankin, which attributed $4.1 trillion and $5.7 trillion in global income losses to the 1982–83 and 1997–98 events. It found that growth stays depressed for at least five years, with most of the loss borne by poorer tropical countries. Its losses cover crops, infrastructure, fisheries, conflict and health. That is a historical estimate and not a forecast for 2026–27.

Lives and health

The Climate Impact Lab, based at the University of Chicago, estimates that El Niño-driven heat could cause up to 451,000 additional deaths worldwide between June 2026 and February 2027, compared with a typical year, including about 239,000 from September onwards. It projects the most deaths in Nigeria (31,400), then Indonesia (19,300), the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia together (19,400), India (15,800) and Brazil (13,300), according to AP reporting. The report is awaiting peer review. Warwick’s Raquel Nunes called the estimate plausible as a modelling exercise, but not a definitive prediction. The lab’s own Marshall Burke told Al Jazeera he believes the total is conservative, and said the India figure is not so convincing because India’s deadliest heat comes in summer, which falls outside the forecast window. The lab expects heat deaths in India and Pakistan to keep rising into their summer.

The WHO and the World Meteorological Organization have called El Niño a “risk multiplier” for health. The WHO’s situation analysis flags dengue, heat stress, malnutrition and worsening chronic disease across South Asia, and cholera in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. WMO’s Celeste Saulo urged governments to “treat extreme heat as the predictable public-health risk that it is.”

What it means for daily life

Several effects are plausible but are not yet measured in the data I found. Watch for them in the coming months: rural income and borrowing in the five drought-hit states, demand for public employment schemes, drinking-water stress as reservoirs fall, pressure on school attendance and migration, and heat in crowded cities where, WMO noted, the effects reach “inside homes, workplaces, schools and hospitals.” Official data on these will lag the weather by months.

What’s different this time

Three things frame this El Niño. The world is warmer than during earlier events. India’s stocks are far larger than in 2023. And the energy and fertiliser shock has already tightened household and farm budgets. Buffers can hold prices for a while, but they do not reach a farmer in Karnataka whose rain failed, or a family in Guatemala whose maize crop is at risk.