El Niño 2026: the real places it is hitting
A record-strength El Niño is building in the Pacific. These are the places it hits. In the game, El Niño rounds flare up only these 21 places, and they worsen faster. Every fix anyone makes counts toward one world total.
What El Niño is
El Niño is a warming of the tropical Pacific that shifts rain and heat around the planet for a year or so. NOAA declared one in 2026 and expects it to be strong to very strong through early 2027, possibly the biggest since records began in 1950. Its fingerprints are consistent: drought and peat fires in Indonesia, drought and fire across the Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal, marine heatwaves that bleach reefs, weak monsoons in South and Southeast Asia, drying lakes on the Altiplano, and heavy rain in East Africa.
The event runs in the game from 12 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, roughly the window forecasters expect the real event to peak and fade. None of this changes anything in the real world: the places are real, the fixes are a game. The one-line facts below are deliberately short and conservative; each place links to its own page with more.
The 21 places
- 🔥 Riau peatland firesRiau, Sumatra, Indonesia · WildfiresEl Niño dries Sumatra's peat; the great haze years of 1997, 2015 and 2023 were all El Niño years.
- 🌴 Borneo palm oil frontierCentral Kalimantan, Indonesia · DeforestationDrained peat and drought: Borneo's worst fire seasons (1997, 2015) came with El Niño.
- 🏭 Citarum RiverWest Java, Indonesia · River pollutionA long El Niño dry season leaves the Citarum low and slow, and the waste in it concentrated.
- 🌽 Chiang Mai burning seasonChiang Mai, Thailand · Air pollutionA drier burning season means more fire and worse haze over northern Thailand, as in 2023.
- 🎣 Tonlé Sap lakeSiem Reap, Cambodia · Wetland lossEl Niño weakens the monsoon flood pulse that fills the lake; 2015-16 and 2019 were record-low floods.
- 🌾 Mekong DeltaCần Thơ, Vietnam · Wetland lossLess river flow lets the sea push inland: the 2016 and 2020 El Niño droughts salted rice fields across the delta.
- 🪸 Great Barrier Reef bleachingQueensland, Australia · Coral bleachingThe 1998 and 2016 mass bleachings were El Niño years; a strong event means another marine heatwave.
- 🐠 Coral Triangle reefsRaja Ampat, Indonesia · Coral bleachingWarm water pooling in the western Pacific bleaches the most diverse reefs on Earth, as in 1998 and 2016.
- 🏝️ Maldives reef bleachingNorth Malé Atoll, Maldives · Coral bleachingThe 1998 El Niño killed most of the Maldives' shallow coral; 2016 bleached it again.
- 🐨 Black Summer bushfire countryNew South Wales, Australia · WildfiresEl Niño years are hotter and drier in eastern Australia, with fire seasons that start early.
- 🐟 Murray–Darling fish killsMenindee, New South Wales, Australia · River pollutionDrought shrinks the Darling to stagnant pools; the 2018-19 fish kills followed a dry El Niño run.
- 🪓 Rondônia arc of deforestationRondônia, Brazil · DeforestationEl Niño brings drought to the Amazon; 2015-16 and 2023 set records, and dry forest burns.
- 🫘 Mato Grosso soy frontierSinop, Mato Grosso, Brazil · DeforestationDrought on the soy frontier turns cleared land and forest edge into tinder.
- 🌾 Cerrado savanna conversionWestern Bahia, Brazil · DeforestationThe savanna's dry season runs longer and hotter, and fires spread across it.
- 🐆 Pantanal wetland firesCorumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil · WildfiresEl Niño drought starves the Pantanal's floods; the 2024 fires followed the 2023-24 event.
- 🔥 Chiquitano dry forest firesSanta Cruz, Bolivia · WildfiresBolivia's dry forests burn worst in drought years, and El Niño brings them.
- 🏜️ Lake PoopóOruro, Bolivia · Drying lakeLake Poopó dried out completely during the 2015-16 El Niño and has barely returned.
- 🌿 Lake VictoriaKisumu, Kenya · River pollutionEl Niño brings heavy short rains to East Africa; the 1997-98 floods washed farm runoff and sewage into the lake.
- 🕉️ Ganges at KanpurUttar Pradesh, India · River pollutionEl Niño years tend to weaken India's monsoon; low flows leave the river's waste more concentrated.
- ⛰️ Haiti's bare hillsidesCentre, Haiti · DeforestationEl Niño dries the Caribbean; the 2015-16 drought wiped out harvests on Haiti's bare hills.
- 🐒 Bosawás Biosphere ReserveJinotega, Nicaragua · DeforestationCentral America's dry corridor fails in El Niño years; the 1998 fires in Bosawás were among the worst on record.
Sources
Per-place history (the 1997-98, 2015-16 and 2023-24 events) is summarised from the public record linked on each place page. Spotted a mistake? Email fixtheearth.today@gmail.com.