With the ongoing El Niño likely to become a historic event, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is watching the Pacific with a team of "recruits."

A few new instruments are joining the fleet to study the location where El Niño begins to better lock down how this current and potentially significant pattern will impact not only your weather over the next few months but the weather around the world.

The latest recruits

A series of instruments are involved in studying the ongoing El Niño event, and the latest are four uncrewed surface vehicles called Saildrones.

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These Saildrones are bright orange and wind-powered, and they can be steered via solar-powered instruments. Humans set the waypoints remotely, and then the onboard computer steers the Saildrone to allow the wind to propel it toward each waypoint.

Those waypoints can be modified in real-time, which is how two of the Saildrones successfully avoided Hurricane Lowell.

What do these Saildrones do, and why does it matter to you?

The goal of these Saildrones is to measure what I unofficially call the birthplace of El Niño. They left Honolulu in August, heading to the Niño 3.4 region. This is the area monitored to determine if an El Niño event has begun. 

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The Saildrones collect data every minute, filling in gaps between stationary oceanic sensors and cross-checking data consistency across the region.

(MORE: Here's your El Niño one-stop shop)

When they reach the Niño 3.4 region, they will measure the exact boundary where the ocean meets the atmosphere. In other words, they will measure precisely where El Niño transfers its heat to the atmosphere.

As this heat is transferred, it alters the jet stream, driving immediate regional weather shifts and influencing global weather patterns. In the U.S., this can bring heavy rainfall and flooding to southern regions, along with warmer, drier conditions across northern states.

The rest of the 'team'

While Saildrones are the latest addition to this region, they are joined by a comprehensive network of existing ocean monitoring instruments:

Moored buoys: These instruments are anchored to the seafloor and never move, watching one patch of ocean for years.

Argo floats: These automated floats sink to a depth of more than 3,000 feet, drift for 10 days, dive down to 6,500 feet and then slowly surface while continuously measuring water properties on their way up.

Drifters: These instruments drift along ocean currents to trace how heat is transported across the sea surface.

Gliders: These instruments silently swim through the water column for months, building the vertical picture satellites can't see.

Satellites: Satellites provide broad surface coverage across vast ocean expanses, though they cannot measure conditions below the surface as effectively.