October 15, 2026|CoreSignal
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!A Pacific Ocean running several degrees warmer than normal is rewriting weather forecasts from Jakarta to Kolkata. India has already lived through its weakest monsoon in over a decade, and the strongest phase of the El Niño 2026–27 is still ahead. For farmers in West Bengal and for households in districts such as Murshidabad, the coming months will test water supplies, rabi and boro cropping plans and the kitchen budget alike.
Super El Niño 2026–27: An Ocean Running Hot
El Niño is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon associated with unusually warm surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. It changes the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere, shifting rainfall patterns and influencing temperatures across different parts of the world.
During many El Niño events, parts of Southeast Asia experience drier conditions, while some other regions receive heavier rainfall. India has historically experienced an increased risk of below-normal summer monsoon rainfall during El Niño years, although the relationship is not absolute.
The current concern comes from the event’s projected strength. NOAA’s October assessment reported sea-surface temperature anomalies exceeding 4°C above average in parts of the eastern equatorial Pacific. Its forecast indicates that the event could strengthen further before reaching its peak.
That does not mean every country will experience a disaster. It means governments, farmers and water managers need to pay close attention to regional forecasts rather than relying on assumptions about a typical season.
El Niño is still strengthening. In its October 8 diagnostic discussion, the US Climate Prediction Center reported Niño-3.4 at +2.1°C, with pockets of the eastern equatorial Pacific running more than 4°C above average, and put the odds of a strong-to-very-strong event through January–March 2027 above 83%. The same assessment, as summarised by The Watchers, gives an 83% chance that the October–December reading will exceed every El Niño recorded since 1950, with the peak expected around December.
India’s own forecasters see a similar timeline. The IMD expects the event to peak in November and ease from March 2027, according to a rundown of the agency’s outlook that also notes most of the country is likely to see below-normal rain through December.
Indonesia’s Burning Season as a Preview
The clearest picture of what a super El Niño can do on land comes from Indonesia. A CNN report carried by AccuWeather recalls that the 2015 episode scorched roughly 2.6 million hectares of Indonesia, cost as much as $28 billion and may have contributed to 100,000 premature deaths across the region. This year, the country’s health ministry has already linked more than 50,000 respiratory infections to the smoke.
Reuters quoted Indonesia’s forestry minister as saying the blazes are largely man-made, with El Niño supplying the drought that lets them spread. Khaleej Times reported nearly 95,000 hectares lost in July alone. India sits far from Borneo’s peatlands, but the mechanism is the same: a stalled rain machine turns a dry season into a disaster.
A Monsoon Broken in June
India’s rainfall record this year reads like a textbook El Niño case. The June–September season closed 12.6% short, with 759.4 mm against a normal 868.6 mm, the weakest since 2015, data compiled by DSIJ from IMD figures show. June was roughly 36% below normal, July briefly recovered, and August and September slipped back into deficit. East and northeast India finished about 25.6% below normal; the southern peninsula, about 24.4%.
The national number hides a harsher reality. Down To Earth noted that the 1987 and 2002 monsoons were each 19% deficient, yet severe drought has taken hold in parts of several states this year at a smaller headline deficit, a sign that the timing and spread of rain mattered as much as the total.
Reservoirs Enter the Dry Months Short
Water stored for winter is thinner than usual. Central Water Commission data, reported through an Indian Express summary, showed 178 key reservoirs at 70% of capacity on September 24, against a ten-year average of 76.62% and 79% a year earlier. South India held only about 50%, compared with 87.25% a year ago, and Maharashtra and Karnataka have declared drought.
Eastern India was already uneasy by mid-season. A July reservoir bulletin analysed by Down To Earth placed West Bengal among the states with the lowest storage levels in the country.
Rice Is Cushioned, the Rest of the Plate Is Not
The food-price picture is split. On the reassuring side, Business Standard reports that central wheat and rice stocks stood near 87 million tonnes on September 1, up from 70.2 million tonnes a year earlier, and that FAO estimates put typical El Niño rice yield losses at just 1–1.5% below trend.
Prices are nonetheless moving. Figures cited by Spherical Insights put September retail inflation at 5.54% and food inflation at 7.74%, up from 5.97% in August, with rural food inflation (8.06%) running ahead of urban (7.18%). Vegetables, pulses, edible oils and sugar are the items analysts keep flagging, since grain stocks do little to steady them.
The pressure is not only about weather. CNBC’s India newsletter recorded India’s foreign minister warning that El Niño, combined with fertiliser shortages linked to wars abroad, could produce a serious food crisis, and quoted an S&P Global economist expecting the rural economy to slow materially through 2026 and 2027. Farming supports roughly 46% of India’s workforce, so a weak harvest quickly becomes weak demand for everything else.
West Bengal: Spared in Total, Exposed in Detail
West Bengal’s season was not a statewide washout. Down To Earth’s monsoon report card shows the state about 2% above normal for June–September, even as neighbouring northeastern states posted steep shortfalls. That headline, however, gives only part of the story.
The Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre’s September 21 assessment, covered by Down To Earth, found Bengal’s overall paddy transplantation pattern broadly in line with last year through mid-August, but flagged delays in Bankura, Purba Bardhaman, Birbhum and Murshidabad. The season, it noted, was defined less by low totals than by prolonged gaps between rain events.
For Bengal, then, the immediate threat is less a failed aman crop than a dry winter. With a super El Niño in place through spring, farmers who rely on rainfall and soil moisture for rabi crops, and on pumped groundwater and canal water for boro paddy, may face a longer and costlier irrigation season. Any fertiliser tightness of the kind flagged nationally would add to the squeeze.
Murshidabad: Too Little Water in One Place, Too Much of the Wrong Kind in Another
Murshidabad’s water story was fragile before El Niño arrived. The Central Ground Water Board’s district booklet, hosted by India Water Portal, describes arsenic in groundwater across 19 blocks, with roughly 40 lakh residents living in the risk zone, along with declining water levels in parts of the district such as Bharatpur II and recurring erosion along the Ganga’s banks.
A dry winter and a hot spring could raise the stakes on both fronts. Safe tubewells and treatment plants would carry more load as surface water recedes, and heavier pumping for irrigation could pull water tables lower where they already fall. The crop forecast centre’s note on delayed transplanting in Murshidabad suggests the margin for error in 2026–27 is slim. Block-level water-level readings and local administrative advisories will say more than any national figure in the coming weeks.
Looking Toward 2027
El Niño’s effects reach well beyond the monsoon calendar. Climate scientist Raghu Murtugudde told FLAME University’s media desk that 2027 could overtake 2024 as the warmest year on record, and a Oneindia explainer reads that as a risk of a severe pre-monsoon heatwave season next spring.
The 2027 monsoon itself is far less certain. NewsBytes, summarising IMD commentary, points out that strong El Niño events have usually peaked at year-end and faded before the next monsoon, and that a stronger event does not automatically mean a weaker monsoon. The Indian Ocean Dipole and the speed of the decay will matter as much as the peak.
The realistic outlook, then, is neither collapse nor calm: a tight winter for water, steady upward pressure on vegetable, pulse and oil prices, a hot spring, and a 2027 monsoon forecast that deserves watching rather than fearing. The next markers are the CPC’s November 12 update, the IMD’s winter outlook and the weekly reservoir bulletins from the Central Water Commission.
Sources are hyperlinked inline. Figures reflect reporting available as of October 15, 2026 and may change as forecasts are updated.
