The New Reality of El Niño: Why “Business as Usual” Is No Longer an Option
Climate ResilienceArticleOctober 7, 2026
A rapidly intensifying El Niño is upending long-held assumptions about our climate, putting tenants, supply chains and workforces at risk and forcing businesses and insurers to rethink how they plan for the seasons ahead. Now is the time to prepare.
El Niño is back, and the numbers are unlike anything scientists have measured before. This natural warming phase reshapes rainfall, temperature and storm patterns across the globe for months at a time. This time, though, the predictions for what’s dubbed as ‘super El Niño’ pose an even greater threat to disrupt the assumptions businesses and insurers rely on to plan for the seasons ahead.
It has the potential to bring widespread disruption and adverse impacts to operations, supply chains and workforces, as well as to our communities at large. So, the question is not whether El Niño will have an effect, but how significant that effect will be and how ready your organization is to respond. Here is our analysis along with some critical actions leaders can undertake now to accelerate their preparation efforts.
A record-breaking event
What sets this year's event apart is not just the strength, but the speed at which it has developed. Sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region, the benchmark scientists use to track El Niño's intensity, hit a daily anomaly of 3.11°C by mid-September, surpassing the previous record of 3.08°C. That is remarkable partly because this event broke the record roughly two months early (El Niño typically peaks in November or December) but also because forecast models now project a peak monthly anomaly later this year of around 4.1°C, well above the previous record.
This intensification is also happening against a backdrop of record ocean warmth unrelated to the natural cycle: global sea surface temperatures logged 100 consecutive days of record highs between June and September 2026. El Niño is acting as an amplifier on top of that warming trend, rather than an isolated cause, suggesting the challenges businesses face this cycle may recur, and intensify, in cycles to come.
What it means for business
El Niño does not turn a single hazard on or off; it redistributes risk, intensifying some hazards in some regions while suppressing others elsewhere.
Historically, strong El Niño events have brought flooding to parts of South America and the southern United States, drought and wildfire risk to Southeast Asia, Australia and the Amazon, and altered hurricane activity in the Atlantic. Canada typically sees milder, drier winters and reduced snowpack, raising spring and summer drought and wildfire risk, while Europe tends to face a wetter, stormier and milder autumn and winter. Greater weather variability is the underlying theme, and the El Niño effects in the months ahead could be more pronounced than ever.
“For organizations of all types, across almost every industry, proactive preparation and scenario planning are critical to mitigating risks and reducing the adverse impacts of El Nino-related weather events. Prescriptive planning today could translate into fewer losses for risk and insurance managers, deriving from supply chain disruptions, workforce wellbeing and productivity, or physical damages to property and infrastructure assets.”
Real estate is one of the sectors most exposed to these compounding effects. Cooling capacity and energy demand come under strain as heat pushes HVAC systems and grids toward their design limits. Water management becomes critical in both directions as drought threatens supply for cooling and fire protection while excess rainfall raises the risk of water ingress. Smoke from wildfires can force evacuations and erode tenant confidence, with knock-on effects for occupancy and asset value.
The same dynamics play out, albeit differently, across other sectors. Healthcare providers face a double exposure: extreme heat and poor air quality drive a surge in patient demand just as the same conditions threaten the cooling, backup power and supply chains hospitals need to respond. Transportation and logistics networks face route closures and driver safety risks as flooding, heat and wildfire disrupt road, rail and port access. Manufacturers face water and utility dependence, where constrained supply can halt production lines with little warning. Agriculture faces yield volatility across an estimated 20-40% of the world's harvested cropland, with knock-on effects for commodity prices and food-dependent supply chains.
Communities are not exempt either. More variable and unpredictable weather threatens public services and the people who rely on them, straining drainage, power and water systems built for a different climate. Local leaders are increasingly being asked how prepared their cities are for compound crisis events, and whether contingency plans, emergency resources and critical infrastructure can hold up under sustained pressure rather than a single storm.
With a once-in-a-generation event in front of us, how can we best prepare?
Actions leaders can take now to accelerate preparation
The effects of El Niño are, to some extent, foreseeable. That provides a window to prepare, rather than wait for conditions to deteriorate further. Six priorities stand out that can power a cohesive and proactive risk management approach to prepare for greater weather volatility ahead.
- Assess multi-hazard exposure across the portfolio (and zoom into regions most likely to face the greatest impacts). Identify every location, asset and operation exposed to heat, drought, flooding, wildfire and smoke, and rank them by potential business impact and service criticality. For real estate portfolios, this means going asset by asset: which buildings depend on cooling systems, water supply or grid connections already operating close to their limits?
- Map critical dependencies. Utilities, suppliers, transport corridors and workforce arrangements can transmit disruptions well beyond the specific location where a hazard first occurs. Understanding these dependencies in advance reveals where a single point of failure could cascade into a much larger business and service interruption.
- Test compound-event scenarios, not just single hazards. Work through how physical damage, workforce disruption, supplier interruption and communications challenges would play out together, since this is the pattern a strong El Niño tends to produce. A workshop bringing operations, facilities and leadership from multiple departments together can identify potential gaps.
- Strengthen preparedness for prolonged conditions. Review site mitigation, emergency arrangements and workforce protections for prolonged heat, smoke or water-stress conditions, rather than short-duration events. Confirm cooling capacity, backup power and water storage can hold up over weeks, not just days.
- Prioritize and own near-term resilience actions. Convert exposure and dependency findings into a phased action plan with named owners, clear escalation triggers and measurable indicators of risk reduction. This is also the moment to build the evidence that underscores conversations on capital allocation, prioritized investments and risk-transfer strategy.
- Embed workforce resilience into risk planning. Identify roles that are location critical and assess options for cross training, remote work and temporary relocation in case of a major incident or disruption. Integrate a holistic workforce strategy into business continuity and crisis plans, going beyond IT and facilities. With this, leadership can help shift the mindset from “incident response” to “endurance.”
“Businesses and public institutions face many of the same risks due to strengthening and more volatile weather patterns. Connectivity is key. The closer public officials and private sector leaders can work on risk prevention, preparation and response planning solutions, the greater impact they can have in protecting their assets, services, stakeholders and communities, ensuring they are prepared for any challenge ahead.”
The time to prepare is now
The current El Niño is not simply a stronger version of events we have weathered before. It is developing faster and is forecast to peak higher than any event since records began, while it arrives on top of an ocean that has already logged 100 consecutive days of record heat this year. For any sector dependent on stable water, power and supply chains, which is to say almost every business or service, the risk is cumulative rather than singular: it is the simultaneous strain on property, people, suppliers and infrastructure that will test institutional resilience most severely.
Organizations that use their time effectively will be better positioned to protect their assets, their people and their operations through the seasons ahead. Those that treat it as a one-time weather event will be those scrambling to shore up their assets and services.
As experts in weather-related risk, Zurich Resilience Solutions works with customers and public institutions to turn early warning signals into practical, prioritized action. Whether through a specific site or portfolio analysis, a compound-event stress-test workshop, or a physical climate vulnerability review, our specialists can help you understand your exposure and build a resilience plan before the peak of this record-breaking El Niño arrives.