I think a common view is that the strength (and possibly frequency?) of El Niño is a symptom of climate change.

> This is more likely to be climate change related. It’s climate denial to try blaming it on El Niño.

It is entirely related to both and I'm pretty sure Gizmodo isn't trying to project blame away from climate change here.

Climate change is making unusually adverse weather events more common in general. El Niño is a cyclical event that results in an increase in adverse weather events from whatever the current baseline is.

As climate change worsens things on average, it'll worsen things even more when combined with amplification events like El Niño.

The current El Niño has broken numerous records for ocean temperatures:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/10/28/this-el-ni...

El Niño is part of the proximate cause for the current water level rise in the Pacific; climate change is the root cause.