El Niño shifts tropical rain belts and disturbs the global atmospheric circulation. The map combines each season's typical patterns with disaster alerts recorded over the last 6 months.
Pick the season for the typical pattern; dots are GDACS alerts.
Heavy rain, floods and debris flows on Peru's northern coast and in Ecuador; the warm sea hits fisheries. The Peru–Bolivia Altiplano and Colombia tend to be drier.
Wetter in southern Brazil, Uruguay and north-eastern Argentina. Amazonia and northern South America: drier and hotter, with low rivers and fires. Central Chile: wetter winters.
Drier rainy season in Central America's Dry Corridor and the Caribbean; fewer Atlantic hurricanes and more in the eastern Pacific. Wetter winters across the southern US and northern Mexico.
Above-normal short rains in Kenya, Somalia, southern Ethiopia and Tanzania, with flood risk; the June–September rains in the Ethiopian highlands tend to be drier.
Drier, hotter rainy season: drought, poor maize harvests and worsening food security in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa.
The Indian monsoon tends to be weaker and heat more intense, though not in every event. Southern India and Sri Lanka can get more rain from October to December.
Drier conditions in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and eastern Australia: agricultural drought, peatland fires and transboundary haze; higher coral bleaching risk.
Wetter in the central Pacific (Kiribati, Tuvalu) and drought in the western Pacific (Micronesia, Fiji, Solomon Islands). Tropical cyclones form further east than usual.
Monthly land and ocean surface temperature anomaly relative to 1901–2000.