El Niño, Spanish for “little boy”, is predicted to become a “very strong” event this year, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States putting the chance of it reaching that threshold at 63% by its peak near the end of 2026. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has warned it could be one of the strongest in seven decades, and some scientists have informally dubbed it a “super” or “Godzilla” El Niño based on the expected size of the sea-surface temperature anomaly. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), while using more measured language, has indicated an 80% likelihood of El Niño conditions during June–August, with probabilities remaining high until at least November.
The phenomenon, named by fishers in the Pacific in the 1800s, was not understood as a global weather driver until the 1970s, when scientists began to piece together its historical role in hot years and brutal extremes. El Niño is a natural climate pattern, not a direct consequence of man-made warming, but a warmer ocean and atmosphere amplify its effects—providing more energy and moisture that intensify heatwaves, heavy rainfall and drought. As one scientist put it, climate change and El Niño form a “dangerous double act”.
El Niño’s global reach: from drought to disease
El Niño regularly triggers extreme weather across the planet. This year, drought is expected in Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia, parts of southern Asia, the Sahel, Southern Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Heavy rainfall and flooding are predicted for parts of southern South America, the southern United States, the Horn of Africa, and Central Asia. The risk of heatwaves on land and ocean increases, and more intense cyclones are forecast in the North-Western Pacific, with more frequent cyclones in the South Pacific. The WMO has urged the world to intensify efforts to build multi-hazard early warning systems; only 128 countries currently report having them in place.
The health impacts are stark. El Niño is linked to increased transmission of vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever, Zika and chikungunya, as stagnant water from flooding combined with warmer temperatures creates ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Torrential rains can compromise water supplies, leading to gastrointestinal diseases, while drought-related malnutrition threatens regions such as Guatemala’s Dry Corridor. A study published in January in Nature Climate Change found that El Niño “persistently” slows improvements in mortality even in wealthy countries such as the US, Australia, Japan and South Korea.
Economically, El Niño events can cause losses in the trillions of dollars. Research attributes $2.1 trillion and $3.9 trillion in global losses to the 1997-98 and 2015-16 extreme events, respectively. The poorest countries, often dependent on agriculture and fishing, are disproportionately affected. An economic downturn following an El Niño event can last more than 14 years. Non-fuel commodity prices tend to rise by about 5.5% over a year, and demand for coal and crude oil increases as hydroelectric power generation falls.
Ethiopia’s scarred history: drought, famine and political upheaval
Few places illustrate El Niño’s capacity for devastation better than Ethiopia. Adugna Woyessa was a little boy when drought tore his country apart in the early 1970s. Harvests failed in rain-starved regions, 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 his fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds. The 1972-73 El Niño had warmed Peruvian waters so severely that it collapsed the world’s largest anchovy fishery, prompting the first forecast of its state the following year. It also brought harsh drought to South Asia, the Sahel and parts of east Africa, deepening global hunger ahead of an oil crisis. In Ethiopia, protests against the emperor’s handling of the famine helped a military coup that ushered in a communist dictatorship.
Woyessa, who grew up to become an epidemiologist at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, has studied El Niño’s effects on malaria epidemics. “Nutrition is everything for your capacity to withstand the challenges of its negative impacts on human health,” he said. But nutrition is often what El Niño takes away. He was in high school when a stronger event hit in 1982-83, forcing some 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 hunger into an even more ruinous famine, which drew global attention through the Live Aid concert. Woyessa and fellow students took turns helping people in shelters. “We had two breads in the morning, and we were supposed to share our breakfast,” he recalled.
Scientists caution that climatic shifts are only one factor when a society collapses, but at the extreme end, El Niño can spell apocalyptic suffering. In the worst El Niño years of the 19th century, famines in India, China and Brazil claimed tens of millions of lives. There is some evidence 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 sustaining their march. Looser theories suggest it brought down ancient civilisations from Egypt to China.
Compounding crises: debt, food insecurity and shrinking aid
The current El Niño arrives amid unprecedented conditions that will make its effects more complex. About half of the world’s 68 poorest countries are experiencing debt distress or are at high risk of it, the International Monetary Fund warned in March. The Iran war has driven up energy prices and restricted fertiliser supplies, weakening buffers against weather shocks. In June, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network projected that 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 mean less support may come when crises hit.
“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.” Anne Jellema, executive director of the climate campaign group 350.org, added that many African and Asian countries most exposed to El Niño also have high levels of food import dependence and debt stress. “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.”
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) issued their first joint appeal for funds on Thursday, seeking $202 million to avert a crisis before it happens. Citing research showing that every $1 spent in “anticipatory action” saves $7 in humanitarian relief costs, the agencies said they were $167m short of the amount needed to help 8.8 million people with drought-resistant seeds, flood defences, water storage systems and cash transfers. The FAO has warned of El Niño risks in the Sahel, Southern Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, and across South and Southeast Asia.
The good news, if any, 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. A study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre warned on Monday that El Niño-related shocks, deepened by geopolitical tensions, high energy and fertiliser prices and fragile supply chains, may be “increasing the likelihood of compound and non-linear systemic impacts”. The authors wrote: “A plausible transmission pathway would run from droughts, floods and heat stress affecting agricultural production, labour productivity, water availability, hydropower generation and transport systems, to higher food and energy prices, inflationary pressure, fiscal stress and weaker borrower repayment capacity.”
For Woyessa, the changes are already visible in the village where he grew up. The river he used to swim in as a boy has been reduced to a small stream. The rainfall that previous generations relied on for planting crops has grown erratic. “The main concern is the shifting of the rainy season,” he said. “The onset is totally changed compared with my childhood.”
