Farming, food supplies and the wider economy face rising weather risks as a strengthening El Niño adds to an already hot global climate, the World Meteorological Organization warned in Antalya, Turkey, on November 9. The UN agency said 2026 is on course to be one of the four warmest years on record.
In its State of the Climate update, released as the COP31 climate conference opened, WMO put the global average near-surface temperature for January through September at about 1.47 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average, with an uncertainty of plus or minus 0.13 degrees. The assessment draws on nine internationally recognized datasets.
That is a partial-year measurement, not a final temperature or ranking for all of 2026. WMO said the figure is likely to rise by year-end as El Niño strengthens. Its final annual climate report is due in March 2027, and the current update does not capture the most recent effects of the developing event.
For businesses, the risk is how heat and changing rainfall reach production and distribution. WMO said El Niño is already increasing risks to agriculture during important growing seasons, especially where farmers depend on rainfall and food insecurity is already high. Crop disruption can put pressure on food supplies and prices, although the update does not forecast a specific increase in grocery prices or quantify a global economic loss.
El Niño is a natural climate pattern involving unusually warm surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific and changes in the atmosphere above them. It can shift rainfall and temperature patterns far beyond the Pacific. It is not the same thing as long-term human-caused warming, but its effects unfold against that warmer background.
WMO said the present event has intensified since August and is expected to continue into early 2027. The agency explains that El Niño releases heat from the ocean rather than creating new heat. With the ocean already exceptionally warm, that release can add to heat, drought and heavy-rainfall risks.
The effects are not uniform. A wetter outlook in one region can coincide with drought elsewhere, and impacts depend on the event’s strength, timing and interaction with other climate patterns. A global warning therefore is not a forecast that every farm, city or market will experience the same conditions.
The update also reports record global sea levels and preliminary evidence of further ocean heating. WMO links extreme weather to disruption in agriculture, energy and transport, making the issue relevant beyond farms. For businesses, those connections mean that weather risk can affect both the source of goods and the systems needed to move them.
The agency stresses sustained observations, seasonal forecasts and early warnings as tools for reducing exposure. Those services can inform decisions about planting, water, emergency supplies and other weather-sensitive operations. They do not remove the uncertainty in how a particular event will develop or where losses will occur.
The UN climate conference in Antalya runs from November 9 to 20. WMO’s release supplies a scientific assessment for that gathering, not a negotiated agreement or a new financial commitment. The full-year temperature, the eventual strength of El Niño and the scale of its regional economic effects remain unsettled.
JBizNews Desk | Antalya, Turkey
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