> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # NOAA Puts a 69% Chance on a Record El Niño. The Last Comparable One Cut Guyana’s Rice Crop by 37% - URL: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/noaa-puts-a-69-chance-on-a-record-el-nino-the-last-comparable-one-cut-guyanas-rice-crop-by-37/ - Published: 2026-08-17T01:31:46.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-17T01:31:54.000Z - Author: Theon Alleyne *By LCN Newsroom — Trade and Agriculture* *La Caribeña News · 16 August 2026* **In short.** *The US Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Advisory on 13 August 2026 giving a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event and a 69% chance that October to December exceeds every El Niño since 1950\. NOAA says El Niño favours drier conditions across the Caribbean from June to October. In the 1997-98 event Guyana’s rice production fell 37% and sugar 13%. CARICOM imports more than 60% of its food and has made Guyana the centre of its plan to change that.* **What has NOAA actually forecast?** A record, at odds of roughly two in three. The Climate Prediction Center’s [ENSO Diagnostic Discussion of 13 August 2026](https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis%5Fmonitoring/enso%5Fadvisory/ensodisc.shtml?ref=lacaribenanews.com) carries an El Niño Advisory and states that El Niño is strengthening, “with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2026-27.” It goes further than that. “During the October-December 2026 season, there is a 69% chance of a historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950,” the discussion says, at a threshold of +2.5°C or more on the three-month Relative Oceanic Niño Index. The July figures behind it: the Niño-3.4 region ran 1.4°C above average, Niño-3 at 1.7°C and Niño-1+2 at 2.9°C, with subsurface anomalies reaching 10°C at depth. The [World Meteorological Organization said on 31 July](https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/strong-el-nino-expected-intensify?ref=lacaribenanews.com) that multi-model ensembles put seasonal average anomalies above 2.9°C in key monitoring regions for August to October. The International Research Institute for Climate and Society put the probability of El Niño conditions at 100% from July-September 2026 through January-March 2027, with 23 of 26 models forecasting a very strong event peaking in October to December. Two points of precision matter. The 69% figure is a probability, not a forecast, and it is measured on the Relative Oceanic Niño Index rather than the Oceanic Niño Index most coverage uses. The next diagnostic discussion is due on 10 September. **Why is this a trade story rather than a weather story?** Because the same event that grows more food in the south makes it more expensive to move north, in a region that imports most of what it eats. CARICOM imports more than 60% of the food it consumes,“with some countries importing more than 80%,” on the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism’s figures. The regional food import bill across 2018 to 2020 was US$13.76bn, about 5% of regional GDP. El Niño does not treat the hemisphere evenly. Reuters reported on 13 August that above-normal rainfall in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil could lift soy, corn and wheat harvests. Germán Heinzenknecht, a meteorologist at Argentina’s Applied Climatology Consultancy, told the agency that added soil moisture through the December to February summer could benefit those crops, with flooding on low-lying land as the offset. So the grain gets grown. The problem is the water it has to cross. **Does El Niño actually cause Caribbean drought?** It tilts the odds, in one particular season, and the qualification matters. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center scientists Jon Gottschalck, Michelle L’Heureux and Matt Rosencrans put it this way in June: “Historically, roughly in the June-October timeframe, El Niño can favor drier-than-average conditions across the Caribbean.” Drought, they said, “is often the primary threat or concern in this region during El Niño events.” The peer-reviewed basis is older and more precise. Alessandra Giannini, Mark Cane and Yochanan Kushnir, writing in the *Journal of Climate* in 2001, found that an El Niño event “is associated with drier-than-average conditions during the boreal summer” of the year it develops, driven by the eastward shift of deep Pacific convection, and historically with “wetter-than-average conditions during the spring” of the following year. They also found that second, wet signal has been disappearing from the recent record. So the relationship is seasonal, it can reverse, and it is not stable across decades. El Niño does not cause Caribbean drought. It loads the dice for one season. The most recent regional analogue is documented. Daniel Herrera and colleagues, in *Geophysical Research Letters* in 2018, attribute the 2013-2016 Pan-Caribbean drought “due in part to El Niño in 2015-2016,” and calculate that anthropogenic warming accounted for roughly 15% to 17% of its severity. NOAA’s own 2015 State of the Climate report recorded the outcome: “Ten island nations experienced severe drought. Emergency water rationing occurred in St. Lucia and in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico.” For northern South America the signal is stronger. Wenju Cai and co-authors, in *Nature Reviews Earth & Environment*in 2020, state that El Niño “is typically accompanied by drought in the Amazon and north-eastern” South America. The Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology issued its own warning in April. Its climatologist Dr Cedric Van Meerbeeck said this event is “likely to bring periods of reduced rainfall and increased humid heat, which can affect water availability,” and that areas already in drought,“particularly in the Eastern Caribbean, may see slower recovery of water resources during the upcoming wet season.” **What is happening to the shipping route, and does it reach the Caribbean?** The canal restrictions are real. The Caribbean’s exposure to them is mostly indirect, and that is worth stating plainly because it is widely assumed otherwise. The Panama Canal Authority [announced on 5 August](https://pancanal.com/en/panama-canal-announces-new-draft-adjustments-for-neopanamax-locks/?ref=lacaribenanews.com) that the Neopanamax maximum draft would fall to 48.0 feet from 26 August and 47.5 feet from 3 September, the fourth and fifth adjustments of the year, following cuts to 49.5 feet in early July, 49.0 feet on 24 July and 48.5 feet on 15 August, against a 50-foot standard. Gatun Lake stood at 84.3 feet on 12 August against a forecast 82.8 feet by mid-October. The Authority attributes this to “current water levels and projected conditions for the upcoming weeks in Gatun Lake,” and says specialists are monitoring “the potential impacts of the El Niño phenomenon.” It has not declared an El Niño-caused restriction. It also states that the draft adjustment “will not affect the number of daily vessel transits,” which remain at roughly 35 a day. The market has repriced. An empty gas supertanker, SK Shipping’s *G. Arete*, paid a record US$4.6m at auction in August to skip the queue, gCaptain reported. Hapag-Lloyd introduced a Panama Canal Surcharge of US$130 per TEU from 15 August, and MSC a surcharge of US$376 per 45-foot container from 12 September. Both apply to Far East to North America services. That is the point. Those surcharges are on Asian trades. The Caribbean’s food imports come predominantly from the US Gulf and East Coast on carriers whose ships never enter the canal. A review of roughly fifty 2026 customer advisories from Seaboard Marine and King Ocean, two of the principal Caribbean operators, found not one referring to the Panama Canal. Every charge in them is fuel, terminal handling, general rate increase or inland trucking. The Caribbean exposure that does exist runs through Asian-sourced goods. CMA CGM raised its Panama Canal Surcharge from US$40 to US$100 per TEU effective 25 July on services including Asia to the Caribbean. That is the confirmed Caribbean-facing figure, and it is an order of magnitude below the Asia to US East Coast charges. La Caribeña News [set out the draft cuts on 6 August](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/panama-canal-draft-cuts-el-nino-caribbean-shipping-2026/). The honest reading is that the canal is a real cost event for the region’s Asian imports and its transshipment traffic, and close to irrelevant for the American food that fills most Caribbean shelves. **What does the drought record say about Guyana?** That the last comparable event took more than a third of the rice crop. The FAO’s Drought Portal records the 1997-98 event in its Guyana national case study: rainfall in March 1997 ran 85% below normal, and from August 1997 to February 1998 precipitation was 75% below normal. On 26 March 1998 the President of Guyana declared a state of national emergency. In the 2009-10 drought, also linked to El Niño, the water level at the East Demerara Water Conservancy fell to 51.65 Geodetic Datum by February 2010. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs put figures to the agricultural loss. Rice production fell 37% and the area sown fell 35%. Sugar production fell 13%. Around 1,300 rice-growing families and 1,000 sugar-cultivating families were affected, some 11,000 people. There was a severe shortage of drinking water nationally, and the government spent about US$1m delivering water to Greater Georgetown and about US$350,000 drilling hinterland wells. OCHA attributed as much as 90% of the rainfall deficiency to El Niño. In the 2015-16 event, GuySuCo’s planting programme was cut by more than half. Guyana’s own forecasters have already issued the warning for this one. The Hydrometeorological Service said on 14 May 2026 that there was around a 90% chance of El Niño developing, with effects from July running through the rest of the year, the most intense heat between mid-August and October, and drier conditions from August to mid-November. It flagged Regions Eight and Nine as capable of reaching drought as early as the end of July, and warned of“lower soil moisture and extended dry periods, which could disrupt planting schedules, reduce crop yields.” **Why does that matter more now than in 1998?** Because in 1998 Guyana was a rice exporter. In 2026 it is the centre of the region’s food security plan. CARICOM’s food import reduction target is led by President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana in his capacity as Lead Head of Government for Agriculture and Food Security. On [21 February 2025 the initiative was extended](https://caricom.org/food-security-initiative-expanded-extended-to-2030/?ref=lacaribenanews.com): what began as a commitment to cut the regional food import bill 25% by 2025 became **Vision 25 by 2030**. The 2025 deadline was not met. It was moved. CARICOM points to a 24% increase in regional food production between 2022 and late 2024, which is a production figure rather than an import-bill figure, and the two are not the same measure. Guyana has delivered on its side of it. Rice production reached 725,282 tonnes in 2024 and passed 810,000 tonnes in 2025\. Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha said on 14 May 2026: “Since the inception of rice growing and rice planting in our country, we have now crossed the 800,000 tonne mark.” The target is a million tonnes. The agriculture budget has risen from G$18.4bn in 2020 to G$104.6bn in 2026. Sugar has gone the other way. Output was 59,200 tonnes in 2025, missing a lowered 60,000-tonne goal against an original target of 80,000\. That is a sector already under pressure before a drought, and one facing a separate squeeze as [the EU-Mercosur agreement erodes the Caribbean’s sugar preference](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/eu-mercosur-caribbean-sugar-preference-2026/). The concentration is the point. A regional plan to replace imports with Guyanese production puts a large share of CARICOM’s food security ambition inside one country’s drainage and irrigation system, in a year its own meteorologists have flagged for drought. **What is already showing up in prices?** The [FAO Food Price Index](https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/fao-food-price-index-edges-up-amid-weather--energy-and-geopolitical-concerns/en?ref=lacaribenanews.com) reached 131.1 points in July 2026, a three-year high, up 1.0% year on year, on figures released on 7 August. The FAO named the causes, and El Niño is among them. It cited “recent heatwaves and energy price dynamics,” “the likely impact of recent heatwaves on crop yields,” and “El Niño-related weather conditions on production prospects in key producing countries in Asia.” The Caribbean baseline is worse than the global one. United Nations figures published in April 2026 put Caribbean food price increases at 55% to 60% since 2018. **Is there anything the region can actually do this year?** Sourcing is the lever the private sector has identified, and it has put a number on it. The Caribbean Private Sector Organisation’s research, cited by its chief executive Dr Patrick Antoine on 7 July 2026, found that switching sourcing to Turkey, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico could save the region close to US$600m a year and cut import bills “north of 20 per cent” on specific product lines, realisable within 12 to 24 months. Antoine described the current port costs as having “added tremendously to what was on the plate,” and as “impacting the economies negatively.” CPSO also quantified a US$322m CARICOM and African Union agri-trade opportunity with Afreximbank in January 2026. Those routes are short and none of them touches the Panama Canal, though neither does the current US-origin trade. The case for switching rests on landed cost and on shortening the chain, not on avoiding the canal. The negotiation with Colombia sits in the same frame. La Caribeña News has covered [what those talks mean for Guyana’s small manufacturers](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/colombia-trade-talks-guyana-msme-manufacturers-2026/). **What should a Caribbean business watch?** Four dates and one number. NOAA’s next ENSO diagnostic discussion, on 10 September, which will either confirm or soften the 69% figure. The Panama Canal draft at 47.5 feet from 3 September, and whether the Authority announces a sixth reduction. The Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology’s drought outlook, which [as of July 2026 already carried drought warnings](https://rcc.cimh.edu.bb/caricof-drought-outlook-by-the-end-of-october-2026/?ref=lacaribenanews.com) for the ABC Islands, the northwest Bahamas, Grand Cayman, Dominica, Grenada, Martinique, northwest Puerto Rico, St Kitts, Saint Lucia, Tobago and the US Virgin Islands. That outlook is calculated on rainfall indices and does not attribute the drought to El Niño, which is a distinction worth preserving. Guyana’s rice harvest against its 810,000-tonne 2025 baseline. And the number: 60%. That is the share of its food the region still imports, and every one of the above lands on it. **Frequently asked questions** **How strong is the 2026-27 El Niño forecast to be?**NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center gives a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event and a 69% chance that October to December 2026 exceeds every El Niño since 1950 on the Relative Oceanic Niño Index. **Does El Niño help or hurt Latin American crops?** Both. Reuters reports it typically brings above-normal rainfall to Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil, which can lift soy, corn and wheat, while raising drought risk further north. **What happened to Guyana in the last comparable El Niño?** In 1997-98, rice production fell 37%, the area sown fell 35% and sugar production fell 13%, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. **Does El Niño cause Caribbean drought?** It tilts the odds in one season. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says El Niño“can favor drier-than-average conditions across the Caribbean” roughly June to October. Peer-reviewed work finds the following spring has historically been wetter, and that signal is weakening. **Do Panama Canal restrictions raise Caribbean food prices?** Mostly not directly. Caribbean food imports come from the US Gulf and East Coast on ships that do not transit the canal. No 2026 canal advisory was issued by Seaboard Marine or King Ocean. The Caribbean exposure runs through Asian-sourced goods and transshipment. **What is CARICOM’s food import target?** Vision 25 by 2030: a 25% cut in the regional food import bill by 2030\. The original 2025 deadline was extended on 21 February 2025\. Guyana’s President leads the portfolio. **How much food does the Caribbean import?** More than 60%, with some countries above 80%, on CARICOM figures. The regional food import bill across 2018 to 2020 was US$13.76bn.