Godzilla El Niño Is Here - and It Isn’t Even the Biggest Problem

Something's badly wrong when ski resorts run out of winter before winter does. Selwyn Ski Resort just closed early because there simply isn't enough snow. And here in Canberra, it's still winter and I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt. One warm day is weather. But when the local warning signs are lining up with extraordinary changes and data from across the planet, we should pay attention.

Out in the Pacific, Godzilla is stirring. Scientists call it a very strong or “Super” El Niño. James Hansen - one of the world’s most prominent and respected climate scientists - calls it a “Super-Duper El Niño”. I think “Godzilla El Niño” better captures what we're facing.

In March, Hansen and his colleagues were still assessing whether the event would become a Super El Niño. Now, according to their latest analysis, the heat anomaly in the upper 300 metres of the equatorial Pacific has already set a new record. And its maximum effects are still several months away. This is no longer just a forecast. It's being measured in real time.

The Bureau of Meteorology reports that equatorial upper-ocean heat during July was the highest recorded in any month since observations began. Yes, El Niño is a natural climate cycle. But this natural heat pulse is occurring on a planet already dangerously warmed by fossil fuels. It's Godzilla entering a city we've soaked in petrol.

But Hansen’s major warning, is that this Godzilla El Niño isn't actually the biggest problem. The larger threat is that human-made global warming is itself accelerating. Earth is absorbing far more energy than it releases back into space. A major peer-reviewed study published in 2025 found this energy imbalance has more than doubled in recent decades. Hansen argues that faster warming will thus continue.

Because land heats faster than oceans, Hansen also projects that average temperatures over the world’s land could approach 2.7°C above the 1880-1920 average during 2027. That's not a prediction that the global land-and-ocean average will reach 2.7°C. But land is where we grow our food, build our cities and live our lives. It's where forests burn, rivers dry, wildlife struggles and people die from extreme heat.

A new study in The Lancet Planetary Health makes that human danger brutally clear. It estimates that, at today’s level of global warming, over one-fifth of people aged over 60 are already exposed to physically unsafe heat for at least one month each year. Each additional degree of warming could expose one billion people to another month of intolerable heat.

These aren't abstract numbers from a distant future. They're warnings about 2027 - from a climate system already breaking records in 2026. Europe’s heatwaves have already been associated with more than 30,000 excess deaths this summer - and that provisional toll is still rising!

Australia should be responding as though this were the national security, public health, economic and ecological emergency that it is. We should be rapidly replacing fossil fuels, protecting and restoring Country, preparing communities for extreme heat and refusing to approve new coal and gas developments that will make the crisis worse.

Instead, our political system is a circus that still downplays climate action in favour of profits for the fossil fuel industry. The Godzilla El Niño has arrived. But the bigger monster is the fossil-fuelled warming beneath it. That's a monster we've created, and one we can't seem to stop feeding.

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