Super El Niño – Stay Ahead with IWMI’s New ENSO Outlook Tool

By Giriraj Amarnath 20 August, 2026

Overwhelming climate data point to a Super El Niño but what can farmers, insurers or government ministers do to prepare? IWMI's Amaranth introduces a first-of-its-kind tool that translates forecasts into anticipatory action

Despite the abundance of forecasting data, El Niño’s impacts still take governments, businesses and farmers by surprise, causing a cascade of shocks from water scarcity to crop failure around the world. This El Niño, a new tool aims to break this cycle of under preparedness.

Developed by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and supported by CGIAR, the ENSO Outlook tool launched in July 2026 links climate data to localised and sector-specific impacts. 

Today we speak to Dr. Giriraj Amarnath from IWMI who led the tool’s development and rollout on how this first-of-its-kind El Niño anticipatory action platform arms governments, humanitarian agencies, farmers, insurers and even commodity traders with the intelligence to gear up for upcoming weather extremes and irregularities before they hit and make the right decisions.

CWR: Hi Giriraj, congrats on the launch of the ENSO Outlook tool! Tell us why your team at IWMI created this tool? How does it help with staying ahead of El Niño?

Dr. Giriraj Amarnath (GA): Thank you! The honest answer is that we created it out of frustration – a productive frustration. Every El Niño cycle, the science community sees the signal coming months in advance, yet farmers, water managers, and even governments are still caught off guard when the impacts arrive.

The gap has never really been about forecasting; it has been about translation. A sea surface temperature anomaly in the Pacific means very little to a paddy farmer in Sri Lanka or a reservoir operator in India unless someone connects it to their season, their crop, their water allocation decision.

The ENSO Outlook tool translates science into real impact data to enable action ahead of the impact

That’s what the ENSO Outlook does. It takes the global climate signal and converts it into actionable, location-specific guidance – what this El Niño likely means for your monsoon, your growing season, your water security – with enough lead time to actually do something about it. Staying ahead of El Niño means shifting from reacting to impacts to anticipating them: adjusting cropping calendars, pre-positioning resources, triggering anticipatory action before the shock lands. That’s the philosophy behind everything we build at IWMI and supported by CGIAR Climate Action and Sustainable Farming Program.

CWR: There’s a lot of forecasting information available out there, so what makes the ENSO Outlook different?

GA: You’re right – there’s no shortage of forecasts. NOAA, WMO, IRI and others produce excellent ENSO diagnostics every month. But most of that information is written by climate scientists for climate scientists, and it arrives as fragments. The real challenge is bringing multiple data sources and indicators together into a single, actionable decision window – and that is exactly what most countries lack the infrastructure and resources to build for themselves.

If a national agency sees an extreme rainfall signal, it may not have the forecasting capability to determine the likely flood events in the coming days – and no off-the-shelf public tool exists that can be customised to drive action. Layer onto that what farmers are actually growing, which crop season they’re in, what the crop status is – and then the hardest question of all: not just where the exposure is, but what level of anticipatory action to take. That’s the gap the ENSO Outlook fills.

The tool’s AI agent integrates seasonal & short-term forecasts…

…packaging info differently for ministers vs farmers vs businesses so they can all make more informed decisions

To do this, we developed something we believe is a first of its kind: an AI agent built around anticipatory action. It automates the integration of the bigger picture – linking seasonal to sub-seasonal to short-term forecasts – so that decision makers have a reasonable window to see what they’re supposed to do, not just what the weather might do. And because a ministry, a farmer, and a business all need different things from the same signal, the information is packaged differently for different user needs.

So three things set the ENSO Outlook apart. First, it’s decision-centered rather than forecast-centered – we start from the question “what should this user do differently this season?” and work backwards. Second, it’s localised: a single ENSO event plays out very differently in Sri Lanka’s Maha season than in the Ethiopian highlands, so we downscale the signal to national and sub-national contexts, working directly with agencies like Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre. Third, it’s connected to action – the Outlook plugs into our wider anticipatory action ecosystem of drought monitoring, agro-advisories, and early warning systems, so the forecast doesn’t just inform, it triggers response. To our knowledge, no comparable tool has been produced at this scale before. That’s the difference between another bulletin and a decision-support system.

CWR: What data sources go into the ENSO tool? Is it trustworthy?

GA: We deliberately built it on the most authoritative sources available rather than reinventing the science. The core ENSO signal draws on the official diagnostics and multi-model ensemble forecasts from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, the International Research Institute at Columbia University, and WMO’s global seasonal outlooks, complemented by seasonal prediction systems such as ECMWF. We then layer in satellite Earth observation – rainfall, soil moisture, vegetation condition – and national datasets from meteorological and disaster management agencies to ground the global signal in local reality.

On trustworthiness: yes, and for two reasons. First, we’re synthesising consensus science, not a single model’s opinion – where models disagree, we say so. Second, we’re honest about uncertainty. A forecast is a probability, not a prophecy, and we communicate it that way. In my experience, credibility in climate services doesn’t come from claiming certainty; it comes from being transparent about what we know, what we don’t, and what’s still worth acting on. We’ve also ground-truthed our tools with farming communities – most recently in drought-affected districts of Maharashtra – so the science is continually tested against lived experience.

CWR: As we brace for a Super El Niño later this year, what is the ENSO tool telling us about its impacts on food and extreme weather? Which areas will be hit the hardest?

GA: The signal this year is exceptional. El Niño conditions established themselves by mid-2026, and forecasts now indicate a very strong – potentially record-strength – event peaking around November through January, likely persisting into early 2027. That puts us in the territory of 1997/98 and 2015/16, both of which triggered major food and water crises.

Weakened rainfall in South/East Asia may affect reservoir storage, hydropower & irrigation into 2027

The pattern of concern is familiar but amplified. For Asia, the biggest worry is monsoon suppression – weakened rainfall across South and Southeast Asia hitting rice systems in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and the Mekong, with knock-on effects for reservoir storage, hydropower and irrigation into 2027. Indonesia and Australia face heightened drought and fire risk.

Southern Africa is entering its growing season with elevated drought probability – a serious food security concern given the region is still recovering from the 2023/24 event. Meanwhile the flood side of the ledger matters too: East Africa and parts of South America typically see excess rainfall and flooding.

One important caveat we stress in every bulletin: an event this strong may not simply mean “the usual impacts, but bigger.” It can behave in unfamiliar ways. That’s precisely why continuous monitoring and anticipatory action matter more than any single seasonal forecast.

CWR: Who would benefit the most from using the tool? Can you share any proven examples of how the private sector has benefited from its insights?

GA: The first-order users are governments and humanitarian agencies – the people who have to allocate water, plan food reserves, and trigger early action.

Working with Sri Lanka’s govt to convene a national forum on El Niño implications with a feedback loop to improve future outlooks

In Sri Lanka, we co-produce the Outlook with the Disaster Management Centre, and we’re supporting the Government in convening a regular national forum on El Niño implications. Different institutions come together to interpret the AI-generated summaries from each bulletin, and – importantly – they feed back what they actually observed on the ground. So when we issue the next month’s outlook, we have a growing evidence base on how well the knowledge products performed and how national actors are using them. That feedback loop is what turns a bulletin into a trusted national service.

The demand is spreading. We’re working with the Government of Zambia, along with partners in East and West Africa – countries looking for exactly this kind of consolidated national intelligence from a single ENSO product, which is the unique proposition of the tool.

We’re also seeing the benefits reach the farm gate. The ENSO knowledge products are integrated into SukhaRakshak AI, our farm-level advisory platform, and we recently ran state-level field validations in southern India, where exposure is significant. Farmers there were already living the El Niño impact – prolonged dry spells, planting decisions being made on scanty rainfall. When SukhaRakshak brings the ENSO intelligence into the advisory, it gives farmers an adequate decision window: what to plant, whether to delay planting, whether to switch crop varieties. The dialogues we had in the field were genuinely encouraging – clear evidence of why the ENSO tool can provide meaningful support to governments, communities, and farmers alike.

Insurance & agribusiness can use the tool to get early, credible, spatially specific risk signals

On the private sector specifically, the most natural fit is agricultural insurance and agribusiness. Insurers need exactly what the ENSO Outlook provides – early, credible, spatially specific risk signals – to design index-based products, price seasonal risk, and pre-position payouts before losses cascade. We have an ongoing engagement with Bajaj Allianz General Insurance in India to embed these insights into product design, alongside our AI-enabled advisory platforms that already reach tens of thousands of farmers.

Beyond insurance, food and beverage supply chains, commodity traders, and hydropower operators all carry ENSO exposure on their balance sheets – often without realising it. Part of our ambition is to make climate intelligence as routine an input to business planning as a financial forecast.

Further readings

• Investing in Farmers for Climate Resilience with Acumen’s Tamer El-Raghy – Growing climate volatility is destabilising global food production so El-Raghy explains why Acumen invests in smallholder farmers & how markets benefit
• The Future of Predicting Black Rain with Prof. Fei Chen – Intense rainstorms are forming quicker than ever as the planet warms & climate modellers are innovating to catch up. Leading in the field is HKUST’s Prof. Chen, who shares the future directions in weather intelligence
• Building AI-Driven Sustainability Intelligence with Climind’s Karen Wang – The biggest challenge for climate startups isn’t building the tech but finding the right pain point to solve, shares entrepreneur Wang

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