How a record-strength El Niño will test the workers' compensation market, and the claims that will follow.
In March 2014, I wrote that global warming was the risk that is just too big for workers' compensation. In June of this year, When the Workplace Overheats warned that a developing El Niño, layered on a warming climate, would test both safety programs and compensation systems. The forecast has now hardened. What was a probability last spring is, in the words of a leading climate scientist, a set of "concrete predictions" for the next 18 months.
The New Forecast
Writing in The New York Times on Sept. 27, 2026, Columbia University climatologist Dr. Jeffrey Shaman reports that the current El Niño has warmed a portion of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific more than 3 degrees Celsius above average. Forecasts give a greater than 80 percent chance it will remain very strong through year-end, and it may become the strongest on record. More than two dozen climate models, which often disagree, are "more aligned than ever before."
The federal forecast confirms it. The NOAA Climate Prediction Center's Oct. 8, 2026 diagnostic discussion keeps an El Niño Advisory in place, reports a Niño-3.4 anomaly of +2.1°C, puts the odds of a strong-to-very-strong event lasting through January to March 2027 above 83 percent, and gives an 83 percent chance of a historic-strength event for October through December.
Dr. Shaman's most important point for our field is the aftermath. The last three major El Niños, in 1997, 2015 and 2023, each produced the warmest year on record at the time, and each following year (1998, 2016 and 2024) was warmer still. He concludes that the summer of 2027 will likely be unusually hot in the Northern Hemisphere and urges hospitals to prepare for surges of heat stroke, cardiovascular events and kidney disease.
Three Diagnoses, Three Claims
Each condition on Dr. Shaman's list maps onto a distinct workers' compensation pathway, and each carries its own litigation risk.
■ Heat stroke and heat exhaustion are typically treated as accidental injuries. In New Jersey, weather is no bar to recovery. The Supreme Court in Coleman v. Cycle Transformer Corp., 105 N.J. 285 (1986), recognized "acts of God, such as lightning" as classic neutral risks, compensable when the employment placed the worker where the harm struck. Outdoor and hot-indoor work goes further, because the job itself increases the exposure.
■ Cardiovascular events face a higher statutory bar. N.J.S.A. 34:15-7.2 requires proof of work effort or strain in excess of the wear and tear of daily living, and Hellwig v. J.F. Rast & Co., 110 N.J. 37 (1988), holds that the work effort must exceed non-work activity and contribute in a material degree. A roofer or utility lineman working through a record heat index will often meet that test. Contemporaneous weather data will be decisive.
■ Kidney disease arrives as an occupational disease claim. Repeated dehydration and heat strain over a season can produce acute kidney injury that becomes chronic. Under N.J.S.A. 34:15-31 and Fiore v. Consolidated Freightways, 140 N.J. 452 (1995), the claimant must show that workplace exposure, characteristic of the occupation, contributed in a material degree and outweighed personal risk factors. Expect carriers to point to diabetes and hypertension, and expect Fiore to govern the fight.
Beyond the Heat
Heat is only one front. Dr. Shaman reports a more than 70 percent chance of above-normal precipitation across parts of the southeastern United States from October to December, raising flood and landslide risk. That means cleanup crews, utility workers, first responders, and restoration contractors working in contaminated water, mold, downed lines, and unstable structures, often as temporary or misclassified labor. Wildfire risk in the West brings smoke exposure claims, and disrupted supply chains and power grids will push indoor warehouse and plant temperatures higher.
Storm patterns are shifting as well. Gallagher Re, as reported by Risk & Insurance, cautioned insurers against treating El Niño as a "risk-off" signal and projected that El Niño, combined with a warm Atlantic, raises hurricane landfall risk in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, including about 10 percent for New Jersey.
A Market Priced for Yesterday
The workers' compensation market enters this event priced on past experience. NCCI's 2026 State of the Line, summarized by Risk & Insurance, reported a 2025 calendar-year combined ratio of 91 percent, but an accident-year combined ratio of 102 percent, above breakeven. Approved NCCI filings are expected to reduce written premiums by about 5 percent, even as medical and indemnity severity each rose 4 percent. The industry's reserve redundancy, estimated at $14 billion, has been subsidizing current results.
Rates built on loss history do not anticipate a climate break. Research by Park, Pankratz and Behrer, drawn from more than 11 million California workers' compensation claims, found that injury risk runs 6 to 9 percent higher on days above 90°F and 10 to 15 percent higher above 100°F, producing roughly 15,000 additional injuries a year in California alone, according to UCLA. Many of those injuries are falls, lacerations and machinery accidents that are never coded as heat-related. The heat signal hides inside ordinary claims data, so actuaries will see it late.
A record-warm 2027 will strain that model. Carriers should expect higher claim frequency in construction, agriculture, warehousing, utilities and delivery, more contested cardiac and renal claims, and catastrophe-style aggregation when a single heat wave or flood strikes many workers at once. Reinsurers will notice. The reserve cushion that has carried the line will not last forever.
The Prevention Gap
Prevention should reduce these claims, but the federal safety net is fraying. OSHA's proposed heat standard, published at 89 Fed. Reg. 70698 (Aug. 30, 2024), remains unfinished. In July 2026 the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced H.R. 6213, which would block it, according to Grist. OSHA did renew its heat National Emphasis Program on April 10, 2026, through 2031, with heat-priority days at an 80°F heat index, but enforcement under the General Duty Clause remains fragile after the Review Commission vacated the citations in Secretary of Labor v. A.H. Sturgill Roofing, Inc. (OSHRC 2019).
States are split. Florida, which faces the forecast's heavy southeastern rainfall and sweltering summer, bars local governments from imposing heat protections beyond state and federal law under Fla. Stat. § 448.106. When prevention is weakened, the cost does not disappear. It moves into the workers' compensation system, onto health insurers and public programs, and onto injured workers and their families.
What To Do Now
■ Employers should build heat, flood and smoke programs to the strictest applicable standard, protect new and returning workers during acclimatization, and stop treating this as an average year.
■ Carriers and self-insurers should revisit 2027 rate filings, reserves and reinsurance with climate scenarios, not just loss history.
■ Claimants' counsel should preserve National Weather Service heat index and precipitation records for the date and location of injury, obtain prompt medical testing, including core temperature, creatine kinase and creatinine, and document hydration, rest and shade practices.
■ Legislators and regulators should consider heat-illness presumptions for high-exposure occupations and clear coverage rules for disaster cleanup workers before the claims arrive.
The Risk Arrives
Twelve years ago, the danger seemed distant. Dr. Shaman's warning makes it immediate: these forecasts "are not abstractions of warming far in the future." The super El Niño of 2026 and 2027 will be the first real stress test of whether a century-old system designed for industrial accidents can carry the cost of a changing climate. There is still time to prepare. The bill is already in the mail.
Sources
1. Jeffrey Shaman, The Super El Niño Is About to Unleash Weather Chaos. Get Ready Now., N.Y. Times (Sept. 27, 2026).
2. NOAA Climate Prediction Center, ENSO Diagnostic Discussion (Oct. 8, 2026) (El Niño Advisory).
3. Jon L. Gelman, When the Workplace Overheats, Workers' Compensation (June 2026).
4. Jon L. Gelman, The Risk That Is Just Too Big for Workers' Compensation: Global Warming, Workers' Compensation (Mar. 2014).
5. Coleman v. Cycle Transformer Corp., 105 N.J. 285, 520 A.2d 1341 (1986).
6. Hellwig v. J.F. Rast & Co., 110 N.J. 37, 538 A.2d 1243 (1988).
7. Fiore v. Consolidated Freightways, 140 N.J. 452 (1995).
8. Secretary of Labor v. A.H. Sturgill Roofing, Inc., OSHRC No. 13-0224 (Feb. 28, 2019).
9. N.J.S.A. 34:15-7.2 (cardiovascular and cerebral vascular claims).
10. N.J.S.A. 34:15-31 (compensable occupational disease defined).
11. Fla. Stat. § 448.106 (workplace heat exposure requirements).
12. OSHA, Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings, 89 Fed. Reg. 70698 (proposed Aug. 30, 2024); OSHA rulemaking docket page.
13. Littler, OSHA Updates and Extends Its Heat Program for Five More Years (Apr. 16, 2026) (CPL 03-00-024).
14. Frida Garza, Congress May Kill the Federal Heat Rule Before OSHA Can, Grist (Aug. 14, 2026) (H.R. 6213).
15. Risk & Insurance, Workers' Compensation Remains Profitable as Premium Dips and Severity Climbs (May 13, 2026) (NCCI 2026 State of the Line).
16. Risk & Insurance, Catastrophe Losses Stay Below Average in H1 2026, But El Niño's Impact Carries Hidden Risks (July 21, 2026) (Gallagher Re).
17. R. Jisung Park, Nora Pankratz & A. Patrick Behrer, Temperature, Workplace Safety, and Labor Market Inequality, Wash. Ctr. for Equitable Growth Working Paper (July 2021).
18. UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, High Temperatures Increase Workers' Injury Risk, Whether They're Outdoors or Inside (July 16, 2021).
Recommended Citation
Jon L. Gelman, El Niño Sends the Bill, Workers' Compensation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com) (Oct. 15, 2026), https://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/2026/10/el-nino-sends-bill.html.
About the Author
Jon L. Gelman of Wayne, NJ, is the author of NJ Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise Modern Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters).
Blog: Workers' Compensation
LinkedIn: JonGelman
LinkedIn Group: Injured Workers Law & Advocacy Group
Author: "Workers' Compensation Law" West-Thomson-Reuters
Blue Sky: jongelman@bsky.social
Substack: https://jongelman.substack.com/
© 2026 Jon L Gelman. All rights reserved.
Attorney Advertising
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
