26/06/2026
A super El Niรฑo is forming in the Pacific. NOAA puts the odds above 60 percent it rivals 1997, the year that triggered billions in losses across agriculture, insurance, and shipping.
Here is the part your CSRD transition plan probably does not cover.
Most climate transition plans model gradual, linear change.
Average temperature rise, average sea level, average rainfall shift, all extrapolated in a straight line out to 2030 or 2050. El Niรฑo does not move in a straight line. It is a six to twelve month spike layered on top of the existing 1.4 to 1.5 degrees of warming we already carry. It hits specific regions hard, fast, and asymmetrically. Drought flips to flood. Flood flips to drought. Fisheries collapse in one basin while another floods with stock.
A transition plan built entirely on long-term averages will say nothing useful about what happens to your supply chain this winter.
This matters for three reasons specific to CSRD and TCFD-aligned reporting.
One. Physical risk disclosure under ESRS E1 asks you to identify acute and chronic risks separately. El Niรฑo is the textbook acute event. If your materiality assessment only lists chronic, gradual risks, an auditor is going to ask why you excluded the acute category that is forming in real time.
Two. Scenario analysis loses credibility fast if it cannot explain a known, named, currently forecast event. "We did not model El Niรฑo" is not a defensible answer in front of a board or an assurance provider eighteen months from now.
Three. Supplier concentration risk. If your scope 3 mapping has not been cross-referenced against documented El Niรฑo-sensitive geographies, you have a gap that is visible to anyone who knows where to look. Peru, Indonesia, Australia, the US Southwest, parts of East Africa.
The fix is not a new framework. It is one additional column in the risk register you already have: which of our top suppliers and facilities sit inside a known ENSO-sensitive zone, and what is the documented exposure if this event peaks as a strong or very strong El Niรฑo this winter.
That column either exists in your file by the next board cycle, or it gets discovered by your auditor first.
Experts say climate pattern could supercharge extreme weather events and push temperatures to record highs