By NOAA Research

On August 21, 2026, two orange Saildrone Explorer uncrewed surface vehicles departed Honolulu, Hawaii, bound for a vast, remote stretch of the eastern Pacific Ocean where a historic El Niño is gaining strength.

Equipped with a suite of specialized meteorological and oceanographic sensors, the two orange, wind-powered craft will rendezvous with two other Saildrones launched the week before on a 6,000-mile round-trip mission for NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL). They will navigate 1,500 miles south to the center of the developing El Niño, where an enormous amount of heat previously confined to the far western Pacific has shifted eastward and is now being released into the atmosphere, altering weather patterns around the globe.

“A monumental El Niño is knocking at the door,” said Michael McPhaden, former PMEL senior scientist now working with NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES). “We’re going to take a closer look.”

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