Is the world ready for a record-breaking El Niño?

El Niños arrive every few years, inflicting drought, flooding and other climate destruction across the globe. Climate scientists are predicting “potentially the biggest El Niño event since the 1870s” in the coming months, said State University of New York at Albany’s Paul Roundy, per The Washington Post. Rising temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean waters could “shift patterns of droughts, floods, heat, humidity and sea ice across the planet,” said the outlet, as well as create a “higher frequency of heat waves” across much of the United States. Such dramatic shifts could have a “profound impact on human society and human well-being,” said climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe to the Post.

El Niños are natural phenomena, but could prove combustible when combined with global warming. The coming El Niño might “lock Earth into a hotter climate” with “lasting changes in heat, rainfall and drought patterns” around the world, said Inside Climate News. Researchers believe the newest cycle “could permanently push” the planet past the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming milestone long seen as the threshold for “potentially irreversible climate impacts” likely to affect food production, human health and the global economy.

What did the commentators say?

The world is about to learn “how much climate disruption we can manage at the moment,” David Wallace-Wells said at The New York Times. The biggest recorded El Niño in 1877 produced famine that killed millions of people in Egypt, India and China and elsewhere, often followed by epidemics of “malaria, plague, dysentery, smallpox and cholera” that further harmed “famine-weakened populations.” The next El Niño may not “produce nearly as much human suffering as the one of 150 years ago.” But it is “almost certain” to make 2027 the “hottest year on record by some margin.”

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“Prepare for bedlam,” Bill McKibben said on The Crucial Years Substack. “We get lots more” fires and floods “when the temperature tilts sharply up” as happens during an El Niño. The coming cycle may offer “final proof that global warming is actually accelerating sickeningly,” coming atop a “higher baseline temperature” produced by the “steady warming of the planet.” The likely weather disasters could set in motion the “next, pivotal chapter of the climate fight.” The ugly truth: “We are ever further into the great overheating.”

What next?

“A lot has changed” since the 1877 El Niño, said The Washington Post. Advances in climate monitoring make the world “much more prepared to deal with the consequences” of massive weather shifts.

It will still be a challenge. “Hotter, drier weather across Asia” could damage crops while farmers on the continent “grapple with fertilizer shortages” caused by the Iran war, said Reuters. El Niño could also “dump more rain ​on Europe and the United States,” affecting U.S. corn and soybean harvests. The uncertainty may prompt farmers to hedge their planting plans. “Why spread expensive fertilizer on a crop that is going to be poor anyway?” said Vitor Pistóia at Australia’s Rabobank to the outlet.