As a powerful El Niño builds in the Pacific, a rare counter-phenomenon may be brewing in the Atlantic. Scientists are monitoring signs that cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures could trigger an Atlantic La Niña event—a development that would mark the second such occurrence in as many years.
Franz Philip Tuchen, an assistant professor of ocean sciences at the University of Miami, told Nexstar that while it's too early to confirm, conditions are aligning. “If this event persists, there is a high chance of an Atlantic Niña forming,” he said.
Atlantic La Niñas are far less common than their Pacific counterparts. Tuchen noted that these events have been “rather rare during the last 25 years until the recent Atlantic Niña event in 2025.” The apparent uptick in frequency, he added, fits a broader pattern of extreme climatic events. “We don’t really know why there are some decades or multiple decades with reduced events and some decades or multiple decades with increased events,” he said. “But we are certainly again in an era of more extreme events.”
Official confirmation of an Atlantic La Niña is unlikely until later this summer, pending additional data collection. If it materializes, the impacts would be mostly regional, unlike the global reach of a Pacific La Niña. According to Tuchen, who discussed the phenomenon in 2024, “everything is a bit smaller” with an Atlantic event.
An Atlantic La Niña typically brings heavier rainfall to West Africa and the Sahel region, while reducing precipitation over northeast Brazil. It also tends to suppress cyclone activity near Cape Verde—a key breeding ground for Atlantic hurricanes. That could indirectly benefit the United States, as fewer Cape Verde storms may translate to reduced hurricane threats for the Caribbean and Gulf Coast states.
Meanwhile, the Pacific El Niño is intensifying rapidly. The Climate Prediction Center estimates an 81% chance that this year's event will become “very strong”—what scientists often call a super El Niño—by early winter. If that forecast holds, it would “rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950,” the center stated.
El Niño typically reshapes U.S. winter weather, bringing warmer, drier conditions to the northern states and the Ohio Valley, while the southern half of the country faces a wetter-than-average season with increased rain and snow. A super El Niño strengthens these patterns, potentially amplifying disruptions.
Tuchen emphasized that the Pacific and Atlantic climate systems are not isolated. “There is definitely a connection between the Pacific and the Atlantic through the atmosphere,” he said. Events can originate independently, but they inevitably interact via atmospheric bridges. For instance, the current El Niño—driven by warmer equatorial Pacific waters—strengthens easterly winds across the Atlantic. Those winds, in turn, stir up wave activity that can cool the ocean surface, helping to spawn an Atlantic La Niña.
The simultaneous emergence of a super El Niño and a rare Atlantic La Niña would be a striking example of how interconnected ocean-atmosphere systems can produce compound extremes. Scientists will be watching closely as summer data rolls in, hoping to untangle the implications for global weather, agriculture, and disaster preparedness.
