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El Nino May Return in 2026 and Make Planet Even Hotter

FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
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El Nino May Return in 2026 and Make Planet Even Hotter

FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)

The warming El Nino weather phenomenon could form later this year, potentially pushing global temperatures to record heights.

There is a 50- to 60-percent chance of El Nino developing during the July-September period and beyond, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The World Meteorological Organization will issue an update on El Nino on Tuesday.

Here's what you need to know about El Nino and its cooler sister, La Nina:

- Why the name? –

El Nino and its cooler sister La Nina are two phases of a natural climate pattern across the tropical Pacific known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Peruvian and Ecuadoran fishermen coined the term El Nino ("the boy" or "the Christ Child") in the 19th century for the arrival of an unusually warm ocean current off the coast that reduced their catch just before Christmas.

Scientists chose the name La Nina as the opposite of El Nino. Between the two events, there is a "neutral" phase.

- El Nino -

El Nino can weaken consistent trade winds that blow east to west across the tropical Pacific, influencing weather by affecting the movement of warm water across this vast ocean.

This weakening warms the usually cooler central and eastern sides of the ocean, altering rainfall over the equatorial Pacific and wind patterns around the world.

The extra heat at the surface of the Pacific releases energy into the atmosphere that can temporarily drive up global temperatures, which is why El Nino years are often among the warmest on record.

"All else being equal, a typical El Nino event tends to cause a temporary increase in the global mean temperature on the order of 0.1C-0.2C," Nat Johnson, an NOAA meteorologist, told AFP.

El Nino occurs every two to seven years.

It typically results in drier conditions across southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, and northern Brazil, and wetter conditions in the Horn of Africa, the southern United States, Peru and Ecuador.

- Another record? -

The last El Nino occurred in 2023-2024, contributing to making 2023 the second highest year on record and 2024 the all-time high.

Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, told AFP in January that 2026 could be "another record-breaking year" if El Nino appears this year.

However, El Nino's impact would be higher in 2027 than in 2026 if it develops in the second half of this year, said Tido Semmler, a climate scientist at Ireland's National Meteorological Service.

"It takes time for the global atmosphere to react to the El Nino," he said.

"Having said this, there is a risk of 2026 being the warmest year on record even without El Nino, due to the global warming trend," Semmler told AFP.

"2027 would face an increased risk of getting a record warm year if El Nino developed in the second half of 2026," he added.

- La Nina -

The latest La Nina episode was relatively weak and short lived, starting in December 2024 and due to enter a neutral phase during the Februady-April period.

La Nina cools the eastern Pacific Ocean for a period of about one to three years, generating the opposite effects to El Nino on global weather.

It leads to wetter conditions in parts of Australia, southeast Asia, India, southeast Africa and northern Brazil, while causing drier conditions in parts of South America.

La Nina did not stop 2025 from being the third hottest on record.

- New calculation –

The NOAA adopted in February a new way of determining El Nino and El Nino events.

The old Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) compared the three-month average sea surface temperature one region of the Pacific with a 30-year average in the same area.

But as the oceans have been warming rapidly, that old 30-year average can be out of date.

The new method, the Relative Oceanic Nino Index (RONI), compares how warm or cool the east-central Pacific is compared to the rest of the tropics.

The NOAA said RONI is a "clearer, more reliable way" to track El Nino and La Nina in real time.

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Varieties

Su Filindeu…World’s Rarest Pasta

A woman wearing glasses and an embroidered apron pulls and stretches pasta dough into numerous thin strands (The New York Times)
A woman wearing glasses and an embroidered apron pulls and stretches pasta dough into numerous thin strands (The New York Times)
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Su Filindeu…World’s Rarest Pasta

A woman wearing glasses and an embroidered apron pulls and stretches pasta dough into numerous thin strands (The New York Times)
A woman wearing glasses and an embroidered apron pulls and stretches pasta dough into numerous thin strands (The New York Times)

Sardinia: Matt Goulding

In the mountains of Northern Sardinia, a 300-year-old pilgrimage comes with a serving of the world’s rarest pasta.

The name tells you all you need to know about the significance of Sardinia’s most elusive pasta: su filindeu, the threads of God. Of the more than 350 officially recognized shapes of pasta in Italy, this is considered the rarest.

Paola Abraini is one of only a handful of people who still know how to make su filindeu. “To lose this tradition would be like losing a piece of our identity,” she said.

Stretched by hand, a single ball of dough is converted into 256 gossamer strands that are stretched across a drying rack called a fundo in a triangular pattern, to evoke the Holy Trinity.
She holds up the circular board covered in a grid pattern with the pasta strands.

It’s a meticulous process that has proven difficult to pass down to younger generations. Every detail of su filindeu matters, including its relationship with its Mediterranean environs. “When it is dried in the sun it becomes light and golden,” said Abraini.

Twenty years ago, Abraini was among the last custodians of the vanishing foodway. But her tireless work as a teacher has helped bring it back from the brink of extinction.

For most of its centuries-long history, su filindeu was a tradition passed down through a single line of matriarchs from Nuoro, a town in the mountainous interior of the island. In fact, Abraini came to learn the intricate craft from her mother-in-law at 16.

Whereas most handmade pasta in Italy is rolled out with a wooden dowel called a mattarello, every pass of su filindeu dough halves the width and doubles the number of strands. Do that eight times and you end up with the requisite 256 threads.

Such finesse requires a not-so-secret ingredient: salt, which tightens the network of gluten in the flour, giving the dough the elasticity required to stretch so thin.

It’s not a recipe that can be read and recreated by enterprising cooks in kitchens abroad; the technique must be felt in the flesh, learned through repetition and error until the fingertips know the difference between just right and just wrong.

To master it requires mastering many variables, including the effect of hard water versus soft water, when to add the salt solution, how to adjust to the weather.

This level of dedication has made younger generations of local women reluctant to take up the practice.

Many have come to Nuoro to learn but few have succeeded at the intricate craftwork. Even the pasta barons of Barilla, the world’s largest pasta company, couldn’t crack the code for these noodles.

Su filindeu is closely bound to its home in the north of Sardinia, a sparsely populated tableau of verdant flora and sheer stone, hearty food and strong beliefs.

Much of the island’s history and culture have been defined by isolation, nowhere more so than Nuoro, which Grazia Deledda, the 1926 Nobel Prize-winning writer who grew up there, called “the most cultured and combative town on the island.”

At the heart of that culture is a biannual Catholic pilgrimage, which begins in the church of Rosario di Nuoro in May and October.

Some of the town’s oldest, and youngest, citizens make the trek.

At midnight on May 1, hundreds of pilgrims set out from Nuoro. Together they traverse over 20 miles of mountainous terrain to the church of San Francesco di Lula.

Some travel in groups of family and friends, telling stories and trading gossip deep into the night. Others prefer a solitary journey of reflection through the darkness.

Orange light peeks out from behind a mountain as the sun rises, a small forest in the foreground.

The first groups of pilgrims arrive at San Francesco di Lula shrine just as the sun rises above the limestone crest of the Monte Albo massif — a spiritual journey now illuminated.

Local lore has it that a bandit back in the 17th century was falsely accused of murder. After being exonerated, he built a church outside the village of Lula and dedicated it to Saint Francis of Assisi, defender of the poor and steward of nature.

The overnight journey evokes a wide range of emotions in Sardinia’s pilgrims — joy, hope, solemnity and catharsis.

The pilgrims endure the journey and the community responds with restorative hospitality: water and coffee, a footbath, and eventually, a bowl of pasta.

Ask five pilgrims why they make the journey, and you’ll get varied answers: For faith. For pride. For a loved one. For exercise. And, of course, for pasta.

One thing that most pilgrims agree on: this is as good as su filindeu gets. For centuries, it was served exclusively at San Francesco di Lula. But recently a few restaurants in Sardinia started to serve the pasta outside of the pilgrimage.

Context is everything, though. Eaten any other time, the dish doesn’t taste the way it does after an overnight mountain hike. It’s the effort that matters — both in the making of the pasta and the pilgrimage to eat it.

Sheep, many of which live in those same mountains, outnumber humans two to one on Sardinia. They play a central role in island culture and cuisine — including as the base for the su filindeu broth.

It takes a village to make the dish, but the division of kitchen labor at San Francesco di Lula is clear: men make the broth, and women cook (and bless) the pasta.

Soft cubes of sheep’s milk cheese are stirred into the broth just before serving. The final creation is more delicate than the sheep-on-sheep treatment would suggest — aromatic, gentle, almost sweet.

For three centuries, the pasta and the pilgrimage have been inexorably connected.
The power of the pilgrimage is found in the balance between solitude and community, sacrifice and hospitality, pain and pleasure.

Seated at the long communal tables, some of the pilgrims have consumed dozens of bowls of su filindeu over the course of decades. Others are just beginning their journey.

The New York Times

Varieties

Czech Republic Marks New Temperature Record at 40.6C

A woman sits in the shade during a hot, sunny day at Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic, 27 June 2026. (EPA)
A woman sits in the shade during a hot, sunny day at Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic, 27 June 2026. (EPA)
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Czech Republic Marks New Temperature Record at 40.6C

A woman sits in the shade during a hot, sunny day at Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic, 27 June 2026. (EPA)
A woman sits in the shade during a hot, sunny day at Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic, 27 June 2026. (EPA)

The Czech Republic recorded its highest-ever temperature on Saturday, with a reading of 40.6C at a weather station in Doksany north of Prague, the national meteorological service (CHMI) said.

The new high beat a previous record of 40.4C, set in 2012 in Dobrichovice southwest of the capital, CHMI added.

"Temperatures are still rising mildly so this may not be the final value," CHMI said on X, adding it would publish a full summary of temperatures later in the day.

Like much of Europe, the Czech Republic has been grappling with a heatwave for the past two weeks.

CHMI said the heat is expected to peak on Sunday with temperatures expected to get close or even exceed 41C.

It added that Saturday marked the first time a temperature above 40C had been recorded in June.

Streets in a southern district of Prague were unusually empty on Saturday, according to an AFP journalist, as Czechs opted to stay home, at swimming pools, in parks or air-conditioned spaces, or headed to the countryside for the scorching weekend.

Prague's public transport operator said it had reduced tram speeds to 40 kilometers per hour -- and to 10 kilometers per hour under bridges -- due to the risk of overhead wires warping in the heat.

Water trucks have been spraying streets across the country to cool urban areas and help reduce ground-level ozone levels.

Several festivals and other public events have also installed misting systems to help cool crowds.

Varieties

Denmark Records Hottest Day on Record at 37C

A woman uses a fan during the heatwave in Copenhagen, Denmark, 26 June 2026. (EPA)
A woman uses a fan during the heatwave in Copenhagen, Denmark, 26 June 2026. (EPA)
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Denmark Records Hottest Day on Record at 37C

A woman uses a fan during the heatwave in Copenhagen, Denmark, 26 June 2026. (EPA)
A woman uses a fan during the heatwave in Copenhagen, Denmark, 26 June 2026. (EPA)

Denmark recorded its highest temperature on record on Saturday, the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) said.

Around 2:00 pm (1200 GMT), DMI said in a post to X that "with 36.6C north of Odense, we have the warmest day ever since measurements began in 1874,"

With a sense of foreboding, it noted "the day isn't over yet..."

"The record lasted exactly one hour," DMI said in a later post.

"Now 37.0C has been measured at Odum north of Aarhus. And counting..."

The previous record temperature in the Scandinavian country was 36.4C which was recorded in August 1975, according to DMI.

DMI had warned that the record could be broken as a heatwave swept over the Scandinavian country, with media showing images of Danes around the country trying to cool off at beaches or along docks in the cities.

The record coincided with the opening of the Roskilde music festival, and one attendant told public broadcaster DR that dragging his luggage to the campsite was "unbearable".

DR reported that the festival had set up water stations for the some 50,000 festival attendees.

Peter Tanev, meteorologist for broadcaster TV2, noted that for years scientists had anticipated that the record would be broken.

"We've been aware that the risk would be there -- among other things because of global warming," Tanev said in a comment.

"The question right now is, how long will this record stand. It's probably only a matter of time before we reach 40 degrees in Denmark," Tanev wrote.

In neighboring Sweden, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) also warned that temperatures in the south of Sweden could reach 36C or 37C in some places.