El Nino Watch

ENSO-neutral

Neither El Nino nor La Nina: the Nino 3.4 temperature stays within 0.5 °C of normal. Other climate drivers then have more say.

El Nino basics

ENSO-neutral means the tropical Pacific is close to its normal state: the Nino 3.4 anomaly is between -0.5 °C and +0.5 °C.

Neutral does not mean "normal weather everywhere". It only means ENSO is not pushing strongly in either direction, so other drivers (the Indian Ocean, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, local weather systems) decide more of what happens.

How to read it

On the charts, the shaded band between -0.5 and +0.5 is the neutral zone.

Sources

Related

ENSO status now

ONI (NOAA CPC)
+1.80 °C, JJA 2026 (previous +1.39 °C)
RONI (NOAA CPC)
+1.36 °C, JJA 2026
Nino 3.4 weekly (NOAA CPC / OISST)
+3.0 °C anomaly, week of 16 Sep 2026 (SST 29.6 °C)