A climate scientist who studies land and ocean temperature records monitors El Niño observations and forecasts from 14 leading models every day. As he writes in Nature, the numbers in recent months have been anything but ordinary.
In early September, the sea surface temperature in the central tropical Pacific was about 2.9°C above the current climate average for the past 30 years. That is more than 1°C warmer than at the same stage of the strong El Niños of 1997 and 2015. Forecasts now put the probability that this year's event will exceed every El Niño since observations began in the 1870s at more than 90%.
El Niños do not affect every region in the same way, but their general impacts are well documented: drought and crop failures in some regions, floods in others, fires in dried-out forests and peatlands, and coral bleaching in overheated oceans. Organizations from agriculture ministries to the World Health Organization must begin preparing immediately to mitigate these risks.
One of El Niño's clearest and most consistent effects is drought in southern Africa. During the four strongest El Niños between 1980 and 2016, the region faced about an 80% chance of below-normal rainfall during the December–February wet season. Even the comparatively moderate El Niño of 2023–24 caused severe drought, leading to disaster declarations in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, and reduced the flow of the Zambezi River to its lowest recorded level. South Africa's maize harvest fell by almost half during the 2015–16 El Niño.
The planting season begins in October, so governments have only a few weeks to act. The author proposes distributing drought-tolerant and early-maturing crop varieties in high-risk areas and expanding programs that provide support when crops fail, similar to measures used in Ethiopia during the 2015–16 drought.
Some effects are already visible: rainfall is declining in Indonesia, increasing the risk of peatland fires. During the 1997 El Niño, Indonesian fires are estimated to have emitted 3–9 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to about 13–40% of global fossil fuel emissions that year. The fires and haze from the 2015 El Niño were linked to about 100,000 additional deaths in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
The Indonesian government has taken significant steps to reduce these risks, including establishing a peatland restoration agency and restricting the clearing of untouched forests and peatlands. However, the risk remains high, and early prevention and preparedness are essential.
The article's message is urgent: this year's El Niño looks set to be the biggest on record, and its consequences can escalate into food insecurity, health problems and ecological damage. Preparing before the worst events can limit the human and environmental cost, but the window for action is narrowing.
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