El Niño is back with a vengeance. A mammoth patch of warm water is growing in the Pacific Ocean, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is [predicting a] “very strong” event by the end of the year. [It] is on track to become the strongest in at least 150 years. For the Amazon rainforest, the timing could hardly be worse. El Niño events, which happen roughly once every two to seven years, upset weather patterns around the globe. For the Amazon basin, they typically trigger severe droughts. The most recent El Niño, which formed in June 2023 … dried out large sections … helping to fuel the worst fire season in more than two decades. …“If this next El Niño really is as strong as we think it will be, it might result in things like huge wildfires in the Amazon, spreading across areas that were unimaginable before,” says Bernardo Flores, at the Juruá Institute in Manaus, Brazil.