A weather advisory from the Met Office covers the UK as El Niño builds in intensity, with forecasters placing its apex within the next few weeks. Driven by a build-up of warmer-than-usual water across the central and eastern stretches of the equatorial Pacific, El Niño is a recurring climate pattern that tends to return somewhere between every two and seven years. Specialists across relevant fields have raised formal advisories ahead of a projected late-2026 arrival.
Research published by NOAA's Chemical Sciences Laboratory points to El Niño as a driver of polar vortex disruption, a pattern that tends to intensify as winter draws toward its close. Circling the North Pole at stratospheric altitudes, a ring of strong westerly winds — known as the polar vortex — acts as a barrier that keeps frigid Arctic air contained within the upper atmosphere. Polar vortex disruptions loosen its grip on frigid Arctic air, opening a path for that cold mass to push down into temperate zones across North America and Europe.
Under that scenario, some meteorologists have pointed to the possibility of strong winds reaching the country, alongside lower temperatures and snow in the months ahead. According to the Met Office, snowfall across most of Britain tends to peak in the new year rather than at Christmas, with January and February historically bringing a higher likelihood of wintry conditions than December.
Data from the 1991–2020 averaging period show snow lying on the ground for roughly three days in December, trailing the January figure of 3.3 days, February's 3.4 days, and a lower 1.9 days recorded in March. Separately, the World Meteorological Organization's latest assessment projects sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific to reach record levels across the final quarter of the year, a pattern the organisation associates with a continuing build-up in El Niño conditions.
In a formal statement, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo indicated that El Niño had taken hold and was gaining intensity at a notable pace. Projections from the WMO put the probability of continuation through February 2027 at close to 100 per cent, with the event potentially ranking among the most intense on record dating back to at least 1950 — a finding that Saulo attributed to agreement reached across 13 national and international centres.
Forecasters draw on a continuous feed of measurements gathered from ocean buoys, orbiting satellites, and atmospheric radiosondes to build their outlook. Forecasts place the seasonal mean sea-surface temperature departure at roughly +3.7°C, with that figure expected to reach its high point during December. That figure would eclipse the prior high, a three-month stretch from November 2015 through January 2016 during which temperatures ran an average of 2.6°C above baseline.
Research from the Met Office has drawn connections between a string of bitter cold spells and heavy snowfall episodes on the one hand, and the ground-level atmospheric effects triggered by abrupt warmings high in the stratosphere on the other. Among the winters that stand out from this period are those of 2009, 2010, and 2013, each bringing notable snowfall, along with the cold weather event widely referred to as the "Beast from the East" that arrived in 2018.
That winter, later labelled the "Big Freeze of 2010," unfolded against a backdrop of El Niño conditions and delivered temperatures not seen over a comparable season in roughly thirty years. A spell of Arctic-driven weather delivered sub-zero conditions and notable accumulations of snow across the final days of February, with those wintry effects persisting well into the opening weeks of March.
