Sustainability Awakening Climate Intelligence
Live ENSO Tracker & Super El Niño / La Niña Teleconnection Dashboard
Tracking the state of the equatorial Pacific, how the current event compares with the strongest El Niños on record, and what it means for rainfall, crops, markets and power grids worldwide.
Current ENSO status
The Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI), NOAA’s official ENSO index since February 2026, classified against the conventional strength thresholds.
Showing the latest RONI value.
How this event compares with past Super El Niños
Seasonal RONI trajectories aligned from the March–May season of each onset year. Turn series on or off to isolate a benchmark year.
Month 1 is the March–May (MAM) season of the onset year, so Months 8–10 cover the usual November–January peak. All values are NOAA CPC RONI (ERSSTv5) figures; recent seasons can be revised for up to two months. Under the traditional ONI the same events peaked at +2.14 (1982–83), +2.37 (1997–98), +2.59 (2015–16) and +1.99 (2023–24). Forecast (CPC, 8 Oct 2026): a strong-to-very strong El Niño is likely through January–March 2027, with a 70–83% chance of a 3-month RONI of +2.5°C or more between October and January, which would exceed every event since 1950.
Global teleconnections
Choose a region to see the typical impacts of each ENSO phase. These are composite tendencies, not certainties.
Pacific ocean–atmosphere coupling
An El Niño persists only while the ocean and atmosphere reinforce each other. These three indicators show whether that feedback is holding or breaking down.
Methodology, sources and FAQ
Index definition. Since 1 February 2026, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center classifies ENSO with the Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI): the three-month running mean of the Niño 3.4 (5°N–5°S, 170°W–120°W) sea surface temperature anomaly minus the anomaly of the whole tropical band (20°N–20°S), rescaled to the variance of the traditional index. Removing the tropical-mean warming trend makes recent El Niños look somewhat weaker and La Niñas stronger than under the traditional Oceanic Niño Index (ONI), which this dashboard still shows for comparison. An episode is recognised when the index stays at or beyond ±0.5°C over several consecutive overlapping seasons, alongside a consistent atmospheric response.
Strength classes. The Weak, Moderate, Strong and Very Strong categories are a widely used convention based on peak index value, not an official NOAA designation. “Super El Niño” is an informal label for events at or above +2.0°C; under RONI only 1982–83, 1997–98 and 2015–16 reached it.
Atmospheric coupling. The SOI is CPC’s standardised Tahiti minus Darwin sea-level pressure index, where sustained values below about −1 indicate El Niño. (Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology uses the same idea multiplied by 10, so its El Niño threshold is −7.) Trade winds are CPC’s standardised 850 hPa index for 175°W–140°W. Heat content is CPC’s average temperature anomaly of the upper 300 m along the equator, 180°–100°W.
Teleconnections. Regional impact summaries synthesise historical composites and are probabilistic. Local outcomes also depend on the Indian Ocean Dipole, the Madden–Julian Oscillation, and the background warming trend.
- NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC)RONI and ONI, weekly Niño 3.4 OISST anomalies, SOI, 850 hPa trade wind and upper-ocean heat content indices, ENSO diagnostic discussions and the official ENSO alert system.
- Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (BoM)Southern Oscillation Index and the Climate Driver Update.
- IRI / Columbia UniversityMonthly ENSO Quick Look and model forecast plume.
- Update cycleValues are refreshed after each weekly CPC update and monthly ENSO diagnostic discussion; the date in the header shows the latest data used.
Go deeper
The physics behind this dashboard, a quick visual explainer, and the US impacts tracker.
© Sustainability Awakening. ENSO intelligence for research and education. Not an official forecast; consult your national meteorological service for warnings.