El Niño Reshapes Weather Patterns Across Indonesia, Oceans and India

What changed

El Niño is strengthening and reshaping weather patterns across several regions, with effects expected to persist until at least 2027.

• Indonesia has burned at least 895,657 hectares since January, more than twice last year’s area.
• The eastern Pacific has recorded 22 named storms and 12 hurricanes, including 10 major hurricanes.
• The Atlantic has seen only eight tropical storms and one hurricane, while India’s monsoon rainfall is 13% below average.

Why it matters

In Indonesia, this is not just a climate pattern on a chart. Fires have closed schools, increased hospital admissions and exposed millions of people in Sumatra and Kalimantan to toxic haze. Around 175,000 people have suffered respiratory illness, including more than 40,000 toddlers.

The same El Niño pattern is producing sharply different results across the oceans. Warmer water and weaker high-altitude winds are helping eastern Pacific storms strengthen. Hurricane Polo reached wind gusts of 180 mph, and three hurricanes formed simultaneously in the basin twice within a month. In the Atlantic, stronger wind shear is breaking storms apart before they can develop, leaving the season unusually quiet.

India faces a quieter but potentially serious pressure point: less monsoon rain. Overall rainfall is 13% below average, with eastern and north-eastern areas around 26% drier than usual and classified as experiencing exceptional drought. That puts agriculture under strain, even though the national figure remains within the meteorological department’s “normal” range.

The outlook is straightforward but conditional: if El Niño persists as expected, these regional patterns may continue to shape fire risk, storm activity and rainfall well into 2027. The important point is not that every event has a single cause. It is that one ocean-atmosphere phenomenon is changing the odds in several places at once.