Scientists track a 3-degree Super El Niño that farmers dread

The Super El Niño can now be measured: 3 degrees at the Pacific surface and 10 at depth

October 2025. Buoys in the Pacific are recording surface temperature differences above 3 degrees and up to 10 degrees in submerged water, according to the data being discussed. Two months remain until the phenomenon's theoretical peak. In Santiago de Chile, storms have already brought hail the size of lemons, and in the Paraná basin, floods have arrived two months earlier than usual. The question hanging in the air is not whether El Niño will be intense, but how much of the global food chain can withstand an episode without precedent in the records.

What El Niño is and why this cycle breaks the scale

El Niño is an anomalous warming of the equatorial Pacific surface that occurs every two to seven years. What is different this time is the magnitude: projections point to an episode with a difference of more than 3 degrees, something that does not appear in the instrumental records. The usual effects are droughts in Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines, and torrential rains along the American Pacific coast, with Peru and Ecuador the hardest hit.

The novelty is the early timing. The effects usually show up from November or December onwards. This year they are already present in October. In Santiago de Chile, flooding has been seen in a city with modern infrastructure and the best public transport in South America, according to the description given in the source. To this is added a storm with unusually large hail.

The Pantanal and the Paraná flood: two months ahead of schedule

El Niño rains feed Brazil's Pantanal, where the Paraná and Paraguay rivers begin. Between the rain and the flood downstream, two or three months usually pass, which places the typical floods between February and March. Asunción, Corrientes and Santa Fe are the cities that historically suffer the floods. This year the process began in October, before the heaviest rains arrive.

Some argue that Argentina's Mesopotamia region floods several times a year and that the phenomenon is not extraordinary. The nuance lies in the date: October floods are not comparable to those of March. If the water is arriving now, the question is where the level will be in the first quarter of 2026.

From the fields to palm oil: the transmission channel to prices

Excess moisture prevents sowing or harvesting on schedule. Coffee from Colombia and Brazil, wheat from the productive regions of Russia and Ukraine, and the palm oil found in almost all processed foods share the same risk: disruption of supply. Add to this the price of diesel, which makes transport and farm machinery more expensive, and a financial context with tensions in the bond and global debt markets.

The estimate circulating in the conversation points to increases of 50% or 100% in some products. When animal feed goes up, meat trinc: chicken, pork and beef. This is not a weather forecast, it is a chain of costs.

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The discussion gets stuck on a point nobody resolves: if the phenomenon is being measured, why does the public conversation still focus on the short term? Perhaps the answer is that the short term always wins. Until it stops doing so.