How an El Niño's impacts chain and compound
An El Niño does not end when the Pacific cools. Its rain and drought fill or drain soils, snowpacks, reservoirs, aquifers, grasslands, fish stocks, grain bins and gas caverns, and those carry the shock into the next season and the next year, sometimes stacking on the La Niña years before and after. Here are the chains that are documented, how long each link takes, where it applies, how strong the evidence is, and what our own data can and cannot confirm.
Lags are counted in months from the peak: month 0 is the January of the peak winter (for this event, January 2027). Counts are "k of n strong El Niños" with 95% intervals; with eight events, even 8 of 8 leaves wide uncertainty.
The lag timeline
Where each link falls, in months after the El Niño peak
One row per chain; each bar is a step, from its earliest to its latest typical timing. Steps that start years earlier (the La Niña droughts before) are drawn from the left edge with an arrow. Hover or tap a bar for the step; click a chain to jump to it.