- The ocean absorbs about 90 percent of excess heat from greenhouse gases, delaying impacts then releasing energy back to the atmosphere.
- Super El Niño builds on that heat, altering weather patterns and creating drought-prone conditions that fuel widespread wildfires.
- Milder winters mean reduced snowpack, drying forests earlier and turning small sparks into massive, harder-to-control fires.
- Rising fossil fuel emissions and political inaction worsen the crisis, leaving communities breathing smoke and facing repeated disasters.
A decade ago, I stood on a ranch outside Omak, Washington, covered in soot and ash. One of the largest wildfires in the state's history had just devoured over 300,000 acres. The rancher, Sealga Durkee, had lost most of her 600 acres to the flames. Thankfully, her home and 30 horses survived, and she was ready to pick up and start again.
My partner, photographer Paul Nicklen, and I were on assignment for National Geographic, documenting the Pacific Blob. This marine heatwave had been cooking the coast from Alaska to Mexico for nearly two years. While we were in the area, Washington State’s then-governor Jay Inslee and his wonderful wife Trudy invited us on a tour to the frontline of the Okanogan Complex fires. He told reporters that unless we dealt with the underlying issue of carbon pollution, this would happen again and again, with greater intensity each year. He was right.
By the end of that season alone, 7.1 million acres had burned across the western U.S. In 2015, worldwide fossil fuel emissions totaled 34.75 billion metric tons, and in 2025, they exceeded 38 billion metric tons. The trend continues to rise as global leaders double down on fossil fuels. It is truly baffling.
Back then, wildfires felt like something largely confined to uninhabited land. For most people, the only impact was a hazy sky and air that was a little harder to breathe. This season, I'm seeing more and more first-person accounts of wildfires. That contrast reminds me of a popular idea I often see online: Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones, with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.
The fires go beyond the Pacific Northwest, ravaging much of North America this season. Wildfires in Canada sent smoke pouring south, and more than 100 million people across the northeastern U.S. found themselves under air quality alerts as skies turned a familiar sickly orange.
Every summer, the same argument flares up alongside the fires themselves. Was it lightning, an unattended campfire, arson? People fixate on how a fire started, as if catching the culprit would stop the next one. A spark falling on wet ground goes nowhere, but dry that forest out for months, and it becomes an inferno. All the while, President Trump blamed wildfire smoke on Canada for "poor forest management," a notion so ridiculous it's almost not even worth addressing. Forest management hasn't changed. What has changed is the climate.
How a warming ocean can fuel wildfires
In Washington all those years ago, I connected the dots between a warming ocean and wildfires, linked by climate change. To many people at the time, that felt like a stretch. But I believe we are about to see that play out again. Right now, a Super El Niño is building in the Pacific, on track to possibly be the strongest ever recorded. And to understand why that matters, you have to start with what’s happening beneath the ocean’s surface.
The ocean absorbs close to 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions. That's actually why climate change isn’t worse yet. But the heat doesn’t disappear once it hits the ocean. Eventually, that stored energy must be released.
El Niño is a natural pattern, not a symptom of climate change. What isn't natural is the amount of heat building up in the ocean.
Some of that heat comes back out through a natural process called El Niño. In the Pacific, trade winds normally push warm surface water west toward Asia, which pulls cool, nutrient-rich water up from the deep along the East Pacific. Every two to seven years, those trade winds weaken, and warm water sloshes back east. That warm water essentially sits stagnant off South America, changing both marine food webs and the atmosphere above and setting off a chain reaction that rewrites weather patterns across the hemisphere and even the world. For some parts of the world, that means heavy rain and flooding. For others, that means drought and wildfires.
El Niño is a natural pattern, not a symptom of climate change. What isn't natural is the amount of heat building up in the ocean. All of this extra heat has nowhere else to go. The ocean was already too hot, and this Super El Niño is developing on top of it.
Climate scientists will tell you the relationship between climate change and El Niño isn't fully understood — we are, after all, entering uncharted territory — but a clear pattern is emerging. Last winter was already mild for the Pacific Northwest. The skiing fans among us will tell you last winter's snow conditions were far from ideal, and we're seeing the consequences play out now, in the form of wildfires.
Snowpack works like a bank account for forests during the dry season, built up over winter and drawn down slowly through spring and summer. If a mild winter can't build up enough snowpack, the forests become drier earlier in the season. That's the mechanism connecting a warm ocean to a burning forest hundreds of miles away.
What could come next
This year is already shaping up to be a bad wildfire season, and this Super El Niño hasn't even set in yet. Experts say we’ll begin to feel its full effects this winter. For the Pacific Northwest, that could spell an even milder winter, with even less snowpack ahead of the 2027 wildfire season.
I fear what's to come as this Super El Niño intensifies. I am afraid for our oceans, our forests, and our planet. The question on my mind is: Why are politicians doubling down on fossil fuels as the world around us burns?
Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen co-founded SeaLegacy in 2014. SeaLegacy’s mission is to inspire people to fall in love with the ocean, amplify a network of changemakers around the world, and catalyze hands-on diplomacy through hopeful, world-class visual storytelling. For more updates on their meaningful work, learn more about SeaLegacy, and subscribe to Ripple Effect, Katie Couric Media’s sustainability newsletter.
