By 2023, the development of El Niño is poised to lead to a global increase in surface air temperatures (SATs), which may result in unprecedented global warming. However, regional patterns of SAT anomalies remain diverse and obscure locations where historical warming records may be broken in the coming year. Our study underscores the significant impact of El Niño and the persistence of climate signals on the interannual variability of regional SAT, both in amplitude and spatial distribution. The probability of global mean SAT exceeding historical records, calculated from July 2023 to June 2024, is estimated to be 90 %, based on annual mean sea surface temperature anomalies in the eastern equatorial Pacific exceeding 0.6°C. Regions particularly prone to record high SATs include coastal and adjacent areas in Asia such as the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea, as well as Alaska, the Caribbean Sea and the Amazon. (Ning Jiang , Congwen Zhu, Yuejian Zhu , more at nature.com)