Since May, scientists have been watching sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean rise at unprecedented speeds. By some metrics, this El Niño is already considered the strongest on record, and we’re still weeks away from its expected peak.

At that point, which should arrive around December, sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region—a key area of the central equatorial Pacific that experts monitor for El Niño and La Niña—are forecast to be about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) above average. All that extra heat will wreak havoc on marine ecosystems, drive up Pacific sea levels, boost global temperatures, and alter weather patterns around the world.

We’re already seeing some of these impacts unfold. El Niño-driven drought in Indonesia and the Amazon is fueling devastating wildfires. Record-high sea levels are flooding the California coast. The Pacific basin has churned out one powerful cyclone after another this hurricane season. And that’s just a taste of what’s likely to come.

But rather than viewing this super El Niño solely as a driver of environmental disaster, many researchers see it as a rare scientific opportunity. This event will serve as a natural experiment, allowing scientists to observe how the ocean and atmosphere respond to exceptionally warm Pacific waters, improve their understanding of El Niño itself, and potentially make better predictions about our warming world.

“I am both very concerned and very excited about this El Niño,” Yassir Eddebbar, an assistant research scientist at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told Gizmodo.

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