El Niño is now official, and NOAA puts the odds of a very strong event at 63%

On 11 June 2026, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center upgraded its alert status from El Niño Watch to El Niño Advisory. The shift in wording matters. A Watch means an event is likely to form. An Advisory means it has arrived. El Niño conditions are now present in the equatorial Pacific, and the central forecast is for them to strengthen through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2026-27.

In May, no strength category exceeded a 37% probability, and forecasters stressed the uncertainty. The June discussion assigns a 63% chance of a very strong El Niño during November-January, an event that would rank among the largest in the record going back to 1950. For commodity markets already pricing climate risk into cocoa, coffee, and grains, that is a meaningful escalation in one month.

What changed in the Pacific

Three indicators firmed up between May and June.

The surface warming spread and intensified. The latest weekly Niño-3.4 index reading is +0.7°C, up from +0.4°C in mid-May. The eastern-basin Niño-1+2 index has surged to +2.1°C, roughly double its May value, reflecting strong warming off the South American coast. Sea surface temperatures are now above average across the central to eastern equatorial Pacific.

Atmospheric coupling is established. Low-level westerly wind anomalies and upper-level easterly anomalies are present over the central equatorial Pacific. Convection has shifted, running slightly above average over the central Pacific and near or below average over Indonesia. Both the traditional and equatorial Southern Oscillation indices are negative. These are the atmospheric signatures that distinguish a genuine El Niño from a warm ocean that the atmosphere has not yet responded to. In May, this coupling was only beginning. In June, NOAA describes the coupled ocean-atmosphere system as reflecting the onset of El Niño.

The equatorial subsurface temperature index decreased over the past month, the one indicator not pointing up, though it remains significantly above average in the central and eastern Pacific. Subsurface heat is the fuel for surface warming over the following months, so a single month of decline is worth noting even though the absolute level stays high. It is the main reason the strength forecast is 63% rather than near-certain.

The forecasters have converged on a strong event.

In May, NOAA's official consensus was cautious, at 82% probability of formation with explicit uncertainty about strength, while Columbia's IRI plume, which is model-based, was already at 98% and pointing toward a significant event. The "super El Niño" framing circulating in the press largely ran ahead of what the official forecast supported. We laid out that split and why cocoa was the first market to price the risk in at the start of June.

The June update closes that gap. NOAA has now caught up to the more aggressive model-based reads. A very strong event is the single most likely strength outcome in the official forecast, not a fringe scenario. That does not guarantee strong impacts everywhere, and NOAA is careful to say so. Even very strong El Niño events fail to deliver the textbook regional outcome in some places. What a strong event does is tilt the odds more decisively toward the expected pattern in each affected region.

Where the agricultural risk concentrates

El Niño's effects are uneven by crop and region, and its strength increases the odds of each regional pattern rather than guaranteeing it. The seasonal rainfall outlooks for the Horn of Africa, South Asia, and Central America are covered region by region in what the 2026 El Niño means for crops and food prices; the summary for commodity-relevant regions runs as follows.

West Africa: tends to dry and warm. This is the risk that cocoa traders are watching, since the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon supply the bulk of the world crop.
Southeast Asia tends to be dry, with a lag of several months. Palm oil in Malaysia and Indonesia, plus rubber and robusta coffee, are the exposures. Drought stress on oil palm shows up in fresh fruit bunch yields 6 to 12 months later.
Australia: tends to dry in the eastern wheat belt. Strong El Niño years have coincided with reduced Australian wheat output.
Southern Africa: tends to dry. Maize and soy in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa are exposed.
Southern South America: tends wetter. This often supports Argentine soybean and corn yields, though the relationship varies year to year.
Mediterranean: ENSO is a weak driver. The North Atlantic Oscillation and Atlantic SST patterns have far larger effects on Greek and wider Mediterranean winter rainfall than ENSO phase. A strong El Niño does not translate into a reliable signal for Greece.

For Greek and Mediterranean farms, the 2026-27 risk story stays anchored in the same regional pressures as before: summer heat extremes, drought, and water scarcity. The ENSO upgrade does not change that local picture. The recent EU climate adaptation study found southern Greece among the regions facing the most pronounced aridification, and that remains the more relevant frame for the domestic audience than the Pacific outlook.

Cocoa prices weigh a record surplus against next season's crop risk

Cocoa is the clearest example of a market trying to price the El Niño risk against near-term supply reality, and right now the two are pulling in opposite directions.

On the bearish side, current supply is running ahead of last year. Ivory Coast farmers shipped about 1.69 million tonnes to ports between 1 October 2025 and 7 June 2026, up 3% year-on-year. On 14 May, the Ivory Coast raised its full 2025/26 delivery estimate to 2.2 million tonnes, up from a prior 1.8 to 1.9 million, citing favorable weather. European Q1 grindings fell 7.8% year-on-year to 325,895 tonnes, the weakest first quarter in 17 years, and North American Q1 grindings fell 3.8%. Demand has softened after two years of high retail prices.

On the bullish side sits the 2026/27 crop and the El Niño premium. Early surveys of the next West African main crop, which begins harvesting in October, showed below-average cherelle formation on cocoa trees. Heavy rain and winds in parts of the Ivory Coast reportedly blew away young flowers. On 29 April, broker StoneX cut its 2026/27 global surplus forecast to 149,000 tonnes from a January estimate of 267,000, citing El Niño risk to the West African crop.

After spiking to a four-month high of around $4,700 per tonne on 11 May, US cocoa futures have eased back to roughly $3,850 per tonne as of 11 June, with an intraday range of around $3,784 to $3,881. That is down about 61% over the past 12 months, a measure of how far the market has fallen from the late-2024 crisis peak above $12,000. The near-term bias has turned softer as the 2025/26 supply picture firms up, while the 2026/27 El Niño risk keeps a floor under the longer-dated contracts.

The Strait of Hormuz closure has raised shipping rates, insurance costs, fuel, and fertiliser prices, all of which lift West African production costs. Cocoa is fertilizer-dependent, and producers face the same input-cost shock that drove the EU Fertilizer Action Plan adopted in May 2026.

Ghana plans to raise about $1 billion through domestic bonds to fund cocoa purchases ahead of the 2026/27 season, a sign of how debt pressure is reshaping the way West African producers finance their crops.

What to watch next

The strength forecast is now the central variable, and three things will refine it.

The next NOAA ENSO Diagnostic Discussion is scheduled for 9 July 2026. It will update the very-strong probability and, importantly, show whether the subsurface heat content has resumed building or continued to ease. That single indicator is the strongest near-term clue to whether the 63% figure rises or falls.

West African rainfall through the August to October main-crop development window is the test for cocoa. If a strengthening El Niño brings the dry, warm conditions the historical pattern suggests, the early cherelle signal will be confirmed in the field and the 2026/27 supply bid intensifies. If rains hold up, the current 2025/26 surplus story keeps prices soft.

Grindings momentum on the demand side will determine how much of any supply-driven rally sticks. If Q2 European and North American grindings stay weak, soft demand offsets part of the El Niño premium.

For Mediterranean growers and buyers sourcing from West Africa and Southeast Asia, the broader signal from the June upgrade is that the climate-driven volatility cycle in soft commodities has another lap to run. A very strong El Niño raises the odds of supply shocks in cocoa, palm oil, and parts of the grains complex over the coming year. The 2023-24 cocoa cycle, which ranged from under $3,000 to above $12,000 and back toward $4,000, is a reminder of how violently these markets move when an ENSO-linked supply shock lands on already-fragile producing regions.