El Niño is back with a vengeance

A dugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long supercharged violent weather from South America to Australia.

The now notorious El Niño – Spanish for “little boy” – was named by fishers in the Pacific in the 1800s, but it was not until the 1970s that scientists understood its global nature and began to piece together the historical impact of the natural weather pattern characterised by hot years and brutal extremes.

The 1972-73 El Niño warmed Peruvian waters to levels that collapsed the world’s largest anchovy fishery – prompting scientists to conduct the first forecast of its state the following year – and brought harsh drought to south Asia, the Sahel and parts of east Africa ahead of an oil crisis that deepened global hunger. In Ethiopia, protests against the emperor’s handling of the famine helped a military coup that ushered in a communist dictatorship.

“El Niño is one of the most challenging climate phenomena,” said Woyessa, who grew up to become an epidemiologist at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute and has studied its effects on malaria epidemics. “Nutrition is everything for your capacity to withstand the challenges of its negative impacts on human health.”

All too often, though, nutrition is what El Niño takes away from those who most need it. Woyessa was in high school when a stronger El Niño hit a decade later in 1982-83, forcing some of his classmates to travel 150km to help with harvests on state farms. By his first year of university, further crop failures and civil war had escalated widespread hunger into an even more ruinous famine, which drew global attention through the Live Aid concert. Woyessa and his fellow students took turns helping people in shelters near their college. “We had two breads in the morning, and we were supposed to share our breakfast.”

Scientists are quick to caution that climatic shifts are only one factor among many when a society collapses, but at the extreme end of the spectrum, El Niño can spell apocalyptic suffering. In the worst El Niño years in the 19th century, the death toll from famines in India, China and Brazil stretched into the tens of millions. There is some evidence to suggest it set the scene for the French Revolution in the 18th century with erratic weather that ruined harvests, and it helped the Spanish conquer the Inca empire in the 16th century with rains that nourished the desert vegetation that sustained their march. Looser theories suggest it brought down ancient civilisations from Egypt to China.

This year, El Niño is back – and scientists fear it will resemble a young man more than a little boy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US said El Niño conditions had formed in the Pacific last week and carried a 63% chance of being “very strong” by the peak near the end of the year. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology followed on Tuesday, warning it would worsen the extreme heat and wildfires that engulf the country each year.

Some scientists have informally dubbed it a “super” or “Godzilla” El Niño based on the expected size of the temperature anomaly, which will push global heat higher at a time when extreme weather events such as Europe’s recent heatwaves and slew of storms are pushing the boundaries of what societies can handle. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) used more measured language when it warned us to prepare for its return earlier this month, arguing a wide spread in model results made it too early to call its strength.

But even if it falls short of doom-laden predictions, it will be arriving amid unprecedented conditions that will make its effects more complex. Scientists say next year is almost certain to be the hottest on record, while a host of economic factors have left vulnerable countries more exposed. “My worry is not for the El Niño alone,” said Sonali McDermid, a climate scientist at New York University who shares the WMO’s caution about its intensity. “I’m worried about the confluence of multiple stressors happening at the same time.”

About half of the world’s 68 poorest countries are experiencing debt distress or at high risk of it, the International Monetary Fund warned in March, and the Iran war has since led to high energy prices and restricted fertiliser supplies that have weakened buffers against weather shocks. This month, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network projected 115-125 million people would need urgent food assistance by December, with risks of famine in Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia. The gutting of US overseas aid and the shrinking of European development budgets means less support may come when crises hit.

On Thursday, the threat posed by El Niño prompted the UN’s World Food Programme and its Food and Agriculture Organization to issue their first joint appeal for funds to avert a crisis before it happens. Citing research that shows every $1 spent in “anticipatory action” saves $7 in humanitarian relief costs, the agencies said they were $167m short of the $202m needed to help 8.8 million people with drought-resistant seeds, flood defences, water storage systems and cash transfers.

The good news, if there is some, is that El Niño is not expected to lead to worse outcomes for crops at a global scale, as gains in some regions typically offset losses in others, but the losers will include those least able to cope. Many of the African and Asian countries most exposed have also been hit hard by fertiliser shocks, and have some of the highest levels of food import dependence and debt stress, said Anne Jellema, the executive director of 350.org, a climate campaign group. “That means El Niño removes the last domestic lifeline for people who can’t access markets, increasingly can’t get humanitarian aid, and can’t move around freely.”