As an industry, we are continually turning a blind eye to the red flags nature waves with alarming regularity. And when those warnings materialise, our response is to be surprised and leap into crisis mode, with the inevitable chaos that goes with it. That is the case with the current El Niño.
The maritime industry likes to think of itself as resilient. We navigate geopolitical crises, economic shocks, pandemics, labour disputes and supply chain disruptions. We pride ourselves on our skill in adapting to uncertainty. And yet every few years, nature exposes a weakness we still haven’t addressed.
The forthcoming El Niño event forecast for 2026–2027 is expected to increase the risk of droughts, floods, heatwaves and operational disruption across large parts of the world. The science is clear: there is a 90% chance El Niño is going to happen in the next couple of months (source: António Guterez, Secretary-General of the United Nations).
The forecasts are public. The warning signs are right here, right now. Let’s be honest about something. El Niño is not the problem. We know what an El Niño could lead to, which is widespread climate disruptions, including extreme weather, temperature shifts and impacts on agriculture, ecosystems, and human health worldwide. The problem is that we continue to treat predictable disruption as a surprise. And if that sounds unfair, look at the evidence.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has confirmed that El Niño conditions are now developing in the tropical Pacific, with sea surface temperatures rising sharply in recent months. NOAA’s June outlook estimates a 63% chance of a very strong El Niño between November and January, potentially placing it among the largest events recorded since 1950.
An animation of the change in sea surface temperature departures from average in the tropical Pacific Ocean, from January 1 through June 8, 2026. (Image credit: NOAA Satellites
The World Meteorological Organization’s latest seasonal outlook points to an 80% probability of El Niño conditions during June-August 2026, while some US and European forecasting models suggest tropical Pacific temperatures could rise more than 3°C above average by the end of the year. This will shift our ‘extreme weather’ norm.
Nature.com says on the basis of these temperature rises the coming El Niño could peak more strongly than the previous one.
The economic consequences are just as difficult to ignore. Current modelling suggests that intensifying El Niño cycles could contribute to cumulative global income losses of up to $84 trillion by the end of the century if adaptation efforts fail to keep pace.
According to the Observer Research Foundation Middle East, a severe El Niño could disrupt agricultural output across Southeast Asia, place additional pressure on energy systems in India and China, reduce maritime transit capacity, and increase demand for LNG and coal during periods of extreme heat.
On top of what the world’s experts can predict, they also warn of the unknown. Even the Met Office has said the impact on sea levels will depend on the strength and duration of the forthcoming El Niño, as well as overall global climate conditions. So it seems natural forces are keeping their cards close to their chest, and will keep us waiting as to its true intentions.
The impact this year’s El Niño will have on shipping costs
No commentator has been brave enough to predict the impact this year’s El Niño will have on shipping costs, but you’ll read in a moment what the last one cost.
In short, this is not an isolated weather event that we can so ‘oh well it couldn’t be helped’. It is something that we can and should account for and plan to mitigate. And we have already seen what happens when that risk collides with maritime operations. The last El Niño event began in June 2023 and persisted into early 2024. Its effects were visible across global supply chains, but nowhere more clearly than at the Panama Canal.
During the 2023–24 event, drought conditions reduced water levels in Gatún Lake, forcing the Panama Canal Authority to restrict vessel drafts and reduce daily transits. On some days, vessel movements fell from around 36–38 ships to as few as 22–24. The consequences were significant.
Ships waited three to four weeks for transit slots. Booking fees surged, with some operators paying between $500,000 and more than $1 million simply to secure passage. More than $200 million in additional freight costs were ultimately passed on to shippers. Some bulk carriers rerouted via Cape Horn, adding between 8,000 and 10,000 nautical miles to individual voyages and increasing fuel consumption, costs and delays throughout global supply chains (sources: Ballast Markets and Ship Technology).
Warnings we choose to ignore
But what makes the Panama Canal story important is not the disruption itself. It is the fact that the disruption was neither sudden nor unexpected. Water levels had been declining for months. Forecasts were available. The risks were widely understood. Booking slot prices were already signalling what was coming. Ships were waiting weeks. The market knew exactly what was happening. Yet much of the industry still behaved as though the restrictions would somehow apply to somebody else. That should make us uncomfortable. This was a behavioral failure rather than a forecasting one.
The maritime sector often rewards short-term optimisation more effectively than long-term preparation. The manager who spends money preparing for a disruption that never materialises is questioned. The manager who waits until disruption arrives can usually point to circumstances beyond their control. One of those behaviours is rewarded. The other often is not.
And that is precisely why the same patterns continue to repeat themselves.
The next El Niño will not expose anything we do not already know. It will simply reveal which organisations acted on the warning and which preferred to believe they had more time. That distinction matters because climate disruption is no longer an occasional operational challenge. It is becoming part of the operating environment.
Every port in Europe lists decarbonisation among its strategic priorities. That is encouraging and necessary. But if resilience is genuinely a priority, why does it so rarely appear with the same urgency in investment decisions? We have become very good at talking about sustainability. We have been far less disciplined about preparing for the operational consequences of a changing climate. At some point, the industry needs to ask itself an uncomfortable question: are we optimising for annual reports or for actual disruption?
Because resilience is not a policy statement. It is not an ESG commitment. It is not a slide in a board presentation. For a port, resilience means knowing at 06:00 that a vessel running four hours late will create a crane conflict at 14:00 and resolving it before it becomes a crisis. It means understanding how changing weather patterns affect vessel arrivals, berth utilisation, cargo flows and emissions before those impacts begin cascading through operations.
Some ports are already doing this. Many still are not. And while the industry often talks about collaboration as the answer, we should be realistic about the challenge. Ports compete. Shipping lines compete. Commercial incentives do not naturally encourage transparency. The idea that everyone will simply share more information because it is the right thing to do is wishful thinking. The market has known this for years.
That is why shared digital infrastructure matters.
Not because technology is a silver bullet, but because it makes better decisions easier to make.
We did not build EmissionInsider because ports needed another dashboard. We built it because too many critical operational and environmental decisions were still being made with incomplete information. Extreme weather events do not just affect vessel schedules. They create congestion, alter traffic flows, increase waiting times and generate emissions hotspots throughout port operations.
The challenge is that most ports can tell you what their emissions looked like last quarter. Very few can tell you what they look like this morning. That means many organisations are still managing disruption retrospectively rather than operationally. By the time the report arrives, the opportunity to prevent the problem has already passed.
Better visibility does not eliminate disruption. But it does allow ports to identify emerging pressure points earlier, understand the consequences of decisions more clearly and intervene before operational friction becomes operational failure. That is what resilience looks like in practice. Not a strategy. Not a target. An operational capability. But visibility alone is not enough.
Knowing disruption is coming only creates value if organisations can respond to it effectively. That is where call planning becomes critical.
When weather events delay arrivals, alter schedules or create congestion across a port network, every decision begins to affect the next. A delayed vessel can create berth conflicts, crane allocation issues, service bottlenecks and knock-on delays throughout the wider supply chain.
This is precisely why we developed PortXchange Synchronizer. By enabling shipping lines, agents, terminals and service providers to share planned, expected and realised times through standardised data exchange, Synchronizer helps stakeholders coordinate port calls around a shared operational picture rather than a series of disconnected assumptions.
The result is not simply greater efficiency. It is greater resilience. Because when disruption occurs, and increasingly it will, the ports that perform best will not necessarily be those with the most resources. They will be the ones able to make better decisions faster, based on the best available information.
The tools are there; a recently completed PortXchange pilot with shipping companies, terminals and agencies generated a 20% saving in waiting time. But let’s talk about the thing nobody wants to talk about. Everything we have said will cost money and a lot of it. There may not be an immediate return on that investment; in fact there won’t be.
As we (and by we, I mean first world nations) put a sticking plaster on after each El Niño, we are showing little or no concern for those nations surviving on a knife edge, those whose economies will be destroyed, those that face famine (or a greater famine), civil war and losing habitable land through erosion.
I have to ask: do first world nations care about any of this? Or do people capable of change merely care only until the end of their lives (say 40-50 years ahead) and not plan any further?
Can they, will they, stop making money the only priority? For the sake of a planet we are stripping bare; it’s time to invest in the world, not expect a short-term return and stop looking only two feet ahead.
Ultimately, the power lies in the hands of the Governments we vote for. Do we vote based on our immediate needs now, or do we think globally for the future? Yes it’s down to every single one of us.
The next El Niño is not the end of this conversation. It is likely the beginning of a period in which climate-related disruption becomes a recurring feature of maritime operations rather than an occasional exception.
The maritime sector has always been defined by its ability to navigate uncertainty. Today, it faces the reality of having to apply that same capability to climate disruption. The next El Niño is not a black swan. It is a scheduled warning.
And if the industry finds itself surprised again, the problem will not be the weather. It will be the choices we made while there was still time to prepare.
