Costa Rica Braces for Extended El Niño With Water Rationing and Inflation on the Horizon

• Costa Rica is bracing for an extended El Niño event that meteorologists now expect to grip the country from June through the second half of 2026 and persist into the early months of 2027, prompting authorities to activate a national contingency plan covering water supply, electricity, agriculture and wildfire risk.
• The Instituto Meteorológico Nacional (IMN) has escalated its El Niño classification from “surveillance” to “advisory,” meaning forecasters now consider the development of the phenomenon highly likely rather than possible. The updated outlook is notably more severe than projections released as recently as April. The IMN now estimates rainfall deficits of up to 50 percent in some regions and temperatures running as much as 2 degrees Celsius above normal, compared with earlier estimates of 10.0% to 30.0% rainfall reduction and warming of 0.5 to 1 degree.
• “Those deficit conditions are now expected to be worse than they were a month ago,” Karina Hernández, head of the IMN’s Climatology Unit and director of the country’s ENOS Phenomenon Consultative Commission, said. She added that under the current outlook, “we would be under the effect of that El Niño throughout the second half of 2026 and possibly extending into the beginning of 2027.”
• The IMN forecast aligns well with the latest from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which puts the probability of El Niño persisting through February 2027 at 96.0%. The North American Multi-Model Ensemble favours El Niño developing within the coming month and continuing through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2026 to 2027.
• The economic implications are already on the central bank’s radar. Banco Central de Costa Rica President Róger Madrigal López has indicated the country should expect an inflationary shock in early 2027 driven by El Niño’s impact on agricultural output and food prices. Reduced precipitation typically squeezes domestic production of staple goods, drives up the cost of livestock feed, and pressures the basic consumer basket.

(Source: Tico Times)