India could face a warmer and drier start to winter, a hotter summer in 2027 and fresh stress on water, crops, power and health as a super El Niño builds in the Pacific, just after a monsoon that ended 12.6 per cent short.
El Niño means ‘the little boy’ in Spanish, but this year’s is anything but little. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecasts the Niño-3.4 sea-surface temperature anomaly, the benchmark used to track El Niño, at about +3.7°C for October to December, peaking around December.
