Updated June 19, 2026 at 3:00 AM MDT
LIMA, Peru — This capital city of 10 million people may overlook the Pacific Ocean at a latitude of 12 degrees south, but its climate is anything but tropical for most of the year. Right now, at the start of winter in the Southern Hemisphere, temperatures are usually in the mid-60s Fahrenheit, with the sky uniformly gray and overcast.
That is thanks to a thermal inversion, triggered by the Andes trapping air cooled by the Humboldt Current, an upwelling of Antarctic water off the Peruvian coast. That inversion gives Lima some of the most predictable — monotonous, some might say — weather on planet Earth.
Not this year.
An unusual mass of warm water has floated in from the Western Pacific, creating outlier summer conditions, with blazing sunshine and balmy waters.
With Peru traditionally ground zero for El Niño, according to NASA climate researcher Severine Fournier, that could spell the start of a record-breaking El Niño — or a "Godzilla" El Niño, as some are dubbing it — wreaking havoc with the weather from Southeast Asia to the Pacific Northwest and lingering well into 2027.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now predicting a 63% chance of a "very strong" El Niño appearing in November, December or January.
"The temperature of the water is amazing," says Fabricia Laura, 29, as she sunbathes on Redondo Beach, beneath the touristy district of Miraflores. She has just been bodyboarding without a wetsuit — something you normally wouldn't do here in mid-June.
"It's even better than in the summer actually. It's fun for us here in Lima, but it does make you worry. El Niño causes a lot of problems in other parts of the world."
"Recently, the westerly winds have picked up," Fournier says. "That means that more warm water could be transported along the equator from the Western Pacific, piling even more on the coast of Peru, strengthening El Niño."
Climate change is "amplifying" the effects of the phenomenon, according to Fournier. Whether it breaks records or not, this year's El Niño will be "on steroids," she says.
As the superheated ocean surface releases its energy into the atmosphere, it will trigger a cascade of weather crises around the globe, starting with flooding here in Peru and then in parts of the United States; hurricanes in the mid-Pacific, around Hawaii; drought in Australia, Northern Africa and parts of Asia; and heat waves from the Pacific Northwest to Europe.
That could spell yet more turbulence for the global economy, including the global food supply, on top of the impacts already caused by the war in Iran.
Those impacts have already started here in Peru. The country's huge anchovy industry — one of the biggest fisheries in the world — has been heavily affected. It accounts for around 40% of the global fish meal supply. Fish meal is a key input for animal feed and aquaculture, and it underpins global agriculture. Because of this disruption, the fishery has just been largely suspended.
The government announced the decision on June 11 in a bid to protect stocks within Peruvian waters, which appear to have dwindled, possibly because the anchovies have moved into cooler parts of the Pacific far from the coast.
In the U.S., the additional rainfall may benefit some farmers impacted by a major drought covering much of the country. But it could also lead to flooding and rotting harvests.
"It definitely looks like an El Niño. That's a guarantee," says Fournier. "But it will have to scale up in the next few months, to become a record El Niño. We'll have to wait and see."
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