El Niño Is Back. And Worse Than Ever.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Baboro. This is the daily. A powerful super El Nino event is right now brewing deep within the Pacific Ocean. The meteorological wrecking ball that is El Nino is back. The Climate Protection Center gives a 69% chance. This year's El Nino may be the strongest since 1950. The heat released by the Pacific Ocean during that event puts spike temperatures into unseen territory. Making 2027 one of the hottest years, perhaps even the hottest year on record. And this year it's already shaping up to be by far the strongest and most severe on record and to wreak havoc across the world. Today, I speak to my colleague, Global Climate reporter Chico Harlan, about El Nino's history, its inner workings, and its destructive powers. It's Wednesday, August 19th. Chico, welcome back to the Daily, thank you, Michael. So I feel like this episode requires a little bit of a confession that despite a lot of us hearing about El Nino our entire lives, and despite pretending we know what it means and invoking it in casual conversation, most of us don't really understand what El Nino does, how it works. And I think if we're going to do justice to a historic El Nino, like the one we're experiencing right now, we should probably start by actually explaining what it is. So El Nino is a planetary phenomenon that is both totally natural and also a huge chaos agent. And at the core, it is something that happens in the tropical Pacific, it is changes that occur there, and to understand those changes that helps to think about this rectangle that stretches across the equator in the Pacific Ocean. It would basically run from the coast of Peru, Ecuador, all the way towards the international Dateline. You're almost in the darkest, most uninhabited territory you could find in the Pacific, south of Hawaii, and to the north of the small islands like Fiji and Samoa. Gotcha. Normally, these waters follow a pretty predictable pattern year by year. They don't change so much in temperature. If I can use Celsius, you know, you can, you can, but this is the best conversation you can. Okay. Normally, they top out in around May at about 28 Celsius, so they're pretty warm and they don't cool off that much, but as you enter the summer, the northern hemisphere summer, they started to cool by maybe a degree, down to about 27 this time of year. So that's most years, and, of course, this rectangle is completely imaginary. It's been concocted by scientists, and only for this reason, they've realized that when things change or go haywire in this part of the ocean, it affects the entire world. To the point where you could almost say that when this part of the Pacific catches a cold, the whole world has a fever. And you're saying, in most years, this part of the Pacific doesn't catch a cold and the rest of us don't catch a fever. That's correct. In El Nino year, the sea surface temperatures, the ocean temperatures, in that part of the Pacific, rather than gliding down, stays high and sometimes even keeps increasing. And if the gap between the temperatures in a given year and the usual temperatures is 0.5 Celsius, a pretty small threshold, that is an El Nino. If the gap between the water temperatures is too Celsius greater than usual, then you have a super El Nino. Got it. This year, we could be heading even for a 3 degree gap, which is beyond what we've ever seen before. Right. Like maybe a super, super El Nino. Yeah, the terminology doesn't exist for it. Well, I want to get back to this year and what all that means. But before we do that, explain why in an El Nino year, these ocean temperatures keep going up rather than gliding back down like they normally would. Okay. Back to this rectangle. Imagine in a normal year that the winds above these waters are blowing the warmth away from South America towards Asia, okay. So these waters are staying relatively cool. They're cooler than the waters in Asia. And there's cold water that's coming up to replace the water that was getting blown away. And so you have a nice cold ecosystem. This is, of course, important to fish and all this other stuff. And in El Nino year, that pattern changes quite a bit. And the winds that normally take that warm water away, either slow down or reverse. And that is one key element in this feedback loop in which the warm water is no longer displaced. Instead, it starts to build and generate on, you could say, quote, unquote, the wrong side of the Pacific. Fascinating. And that hot water that's normally stored on the Asian side can come all the way over towards the South American side. And just explain why that is so meaningful. Well, let's just remember that the Pacific is huge. So imagine how much extra warmth it takes to warm that body of water by a couple degrees. That's the extra energy that you're adding to the room of this, you know, rectangle that we initially talked about. And when that happens, you have this warmth that rises into the atmosphere like 10 kilometers or six miles high. I've heard it described that the ocean and the atmosphere are kind of always interacting together in this like tug of war. And so when you have this extra column of warmth going up there, that changes everything leads to changes in pressure, changes in winds. And this of course can steer storms and steer where moisture travels. Another way of thinking about this, I've sometimes heard El Nino described as the biggest reorganizer of the world's climate patterns aside from the change in seasons. That's how big it is. Basically, the heat in this one crucial place reorganizes, if I can introduce another metaphor, all the organs of the body in the global weather system. And suddenly the liver's not where it's supposed to be, the kidney's not where it's supposed to be, and I know this metaphor is getting kind of wacky, but it's not raining where it's supposed to and it's not dry where it's supposed to. Right. And that is where the El Nino's consequences start to play out for us, the people and animals living on land. We'll talk about those consequences historically. They can be huge and they were apparent going back centuries at least. I mean, before we even knew what El Nino was. In the 1600s, there were Spanish colonists in Peru who started noticing tropical fish every couple of years, strangely washing up on their shores. And so this would happen around December, so they would call it El Nino de Navidad, basically Christ child. And they probably thought it was just some supernatural thing. They would have never suspected that it was part of this global phenomenon. But sure enough, the fingerprints of El Nino were all over civilizations going back millennia. There's all sorts of theories, and you can kind of have a fun academic time with this, that it's influenced the rise and fall of Pharaohs going back to Egyptian times. You know, I even read a paper that it had a hand in the French Revolution. Wow. I wouldn't necessarily sign my name to that. But what we do know is that in 1877, there was a really big one, still before we understood what El Nino was. And that this one coincided with a huge famine that played out in multiple countries. It was a famine that killed 50 million people estimated, about three to four percent of the population. Wow. One paper that I was reading called it arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity. There were droughts at the same time in Ethiopia, China, Egypt, Morocco, Brazil, India was especially hard hit. And scientists attribute that awful situation you just described to some meaningful degree to an El Nino in that season. Correct. In some places, there was already drought and even bad drought beforehand. But then El Nino came and exacerbated those circumstances. And at the time, like nobody could have believed that some phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean was playing out with these global consequences. I mean, people living near the Pacific coast of South America had been aware that there was this weird pattern that would play out every two to seven years. Peru and the fish and the name, yes, but only in the 1950s, 1960s did scientists start to put together the idea that something was happening that these events were connected. That's fascinating. Okay. So I think that brings us back to this year and this El Nino, which Chico you had mentioned already involves a major increase in temperature by historical metrics. Just how severe do we think this El Nino will be? Okay. As we mentioned, El Nino's normally reach their peak around November, December. That's when these Peruvians would see the tropical fish. But this El Nino is already big in August. Already big enough that if this was its December size, its full grown size, it would already be one of the biggest on record. So what has scientists kind of alarmed, I think you can say, is that it still has months more to grow. And it feels like all but an inevitability to them at this point that by the time it's done growing, it will be the largest. on record. And that record dates back about 80 years. Not like people had temperature or measure engages in this rectangle going back into the 19th century. Right. But the best guess if you talk to scientists is that this one could be the biggest in hundreds of years. Wow. That's what we're talking about for 2026 and 2027. And as you can imagine, the consequences of that for the world are huge. And in fact, we're already beginning to see them. We'll be right back. So take a talk about the impacts already of this year's historically strong El Nino, or I guess super El Nino. Yeah. Well, already across at least three continents, some of these tell-tale patterns that typically come with an El Nino are playing out. So you have Panama, which is normally one of the the wettest countries on earth. They even had a major storm since May. And it's even like been raising concerns about the viability of the Panama Canal because that canal actually takes water from a rain fed lake for its locks. Then go to Africa. The Horn of Africa always gets kind of a crazy back and forth during El Nino, but parts can be very dry. Ethiopia's highlands, which are very important for feeding the country, have had some of the driest like June July periods on record. Kenya, similar story, like really bad May's harvest there. And then India. India is another place that is often very dry during El Nino's. Right. And it had its fifth driest June. There is a lot of concern also in Southeast Asia and Australia. So the impact is just at the very beginning, but these are some of the first places where we're seeing signs of these marks reaching across the planet. Mm-hmm. You had mentioned the really severe situation in the 1800s that flowed from the severe El Nino then. And those scenes were extraordinarily grim. Are we on track to see the scale of suffering that we saw back then this year because it is going to be such a big temperature change in the waters? I have to say probably not. I mean, nobody is predicting like 34% of the world's population dies because of this El Nino. Like the good news here is we have gotten really good at agricultural production. Of course, the planet's population has grown, but so has the efficiency for corn and soybeans. You know, India just as one example, like I was reading stories yesterday about how extremely high its stocks of rice and grains are like they're running out of warehouse space. So countries are much more prepared. Planning better. Yes, they are planning better and they're far from the only country. But what is going to happen still is that this global system that's already been facing strains because of oil prices because of fertilizer prices from the war in Iran is going to be further strained. And that does still lead to real human suffering. I mean, the UN's world food program is predicting that an extra 50 million people will face food shortages because of this. So when you see a number like that, it just drives home the point that this is almost tantamount to a war in terms of the human suffering and hunger that it brings on. So given the severity of this El Nino, how long is it going to last? Normally these El Nino's last about 12 to 15 months. I have to say, it's a pretty long stretch of time, a year, a year plus. But is the idea that once an El Nino passes, then everything pretty much reverts back to status quo? Well, some of the consequences are a bit delayed. As in even though the El Nino arrives in 2026, some of what we'll be seeing as the most lasting marks will be playing out next year. Just explain that. Well, heat. It is the biggest thing. The pattern that we see again and again with El Nino's is that the year after they emerge, you have the hottest year on record. So let's just go back in time a little bit. There was a big El Nino that formed in 1997, which was at the time the hottest year on record. Well, 1998 beat that record and became the new hottest year. Then there was a big El Nino in 2015, which was again, the new hottest year ever until 2016 came along. Then there was a smaller but still significant El Nino in 2023, new hottest year ever, stolen the gold medal by 2024 as the El Nino was still playing out. Now we don't know the record of course has gotten hotter and hotter and harder and harder to beat. It's still unclear if 2026 will be the new hottest year ever it could. But what experts almost feel certain about and it's hard to get scientists to agree on much is that 2027 will be not only a record breaker but potentially by quite a big margin. You're already seeing how this year which started far off of record pace has now hit this inflection point where every day in August is the warmest given date of any year that we know. That wasn't true in May, April going back July. It started to get extremely hot August, 2026 has hit this record pace. So scientists expect that will continue and even become more intense of a trend into the second half of this year and then for sure into 2027. The number one thing that you say about El Nino's impact globally is that the planet gets hotter. Well, I'm glad you're bringing up warming temperatures because this entire time we're talking. I've been thinking about the interplay of El Nino and climate change, global warming. How much should we do we attribute El Nino itself and perhaps what seems like the growing frequency of it from the list you just went through to climate change? Let's first talk about the part that nobody is debating that everybody agrees upon, which is that the impact of El Nino is becoming amplified. You could say because of climate change. What climate change is doing in any year is it's leading to hotter temperatures and it's making more moisture in the air, more moisture intensifies flooding and rainfall, higher temperatures makes droughts happen faster. So El Nino is kind of piggybacking off of that and so the droughts that would normally happen because of El Nino are more intense, same with the rainfall in the flooding, more intense. The big question the one that you were kind of asking about is about the physical magnitude of El Nino, the things happening in the ocean. Are those becoming more intense or more frequent because of the way we're fettling with the planet? And this is like the million dollar question for scientists. I've talked to many of them about this and they all have strong opinions and there is almost no consensus. The biggest problem with unraveling this question is that in order to understand whether we're seeing a period of stronger El Nino's and there's evidence that we are, there's evidence that the last 40 years, 50 years of El Nino's have been stronger than anything that came over the previous 600. But to really have confidence that something irregular is happening, you really want longer records and we don't have that. And if you go back longer in time, things get really fuzzy, you know, talk about mega events from long ago. Well, there was no climate change then. So there is this question that hangs over this event, like, is this partly our making that we don't know? And that scientists some say yes, some say no, but what they all seem to have is this curiosity that, hey, like over the next 20 years, over the next 50 years, we're going to get a much better sense of whether we are doing this to ourselves, whether we are creating the environment for more intense El Nino's. And of course, if big events like this keep coming, then the answer will become clear. Right. So here's what I think we are, whether wise, climate change is making all of our weather more extreme. And here I'm thinking about the heat waves in Europe, followed by the wildfires in Europe. We did an episode about that. You were one of the guests, not to mention the wildfires in Canada that just brought days of pretty awful smoke to my city, New York. And now on top of that, we have the worst El Nino on record, which beyond its immediate disruption and pain will be even more of that heat in a year. So what a time to be alive, right? I mean, how do you as global climate reporter think about that? It might just be bad luck that we're getting such a big event this year when we're already thinking about, you know, a time of extreme weather. It could just be that, you know, the planetary system is playing a big joke on us and giving us some more extreme weather on top of what we've already have. But what we can say also is that this event kind of unintentionally by raising global temperatures for even a brief period gives us a little sneak preview of where we're already going. Like next year, temperatures will be higher than what we've faced before, maybe quite a bit higher. And we would be getting to that level eventually just by our own making, but not until the 2030s, maybe not until the late 2030s. So next year, with the heat, with the commensurate, you know, more extreme weather that comes with it, we'll be kind of a sneak preview, just a brief one, but a sneak preview into what will become the norm in 2035 and 2036. El Nino goes away, but some of the things we see next year will be coming back for us in the not too distant future. Well, Chico, thank you very much. much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. Appreciate it, you can read more from Chico Harlan and our entire climate team on the New York Times app. If you don't already have the app, we want to let you know that if you download it right now, you'll get access to all of our journalism free for one month. So give it a try, and we'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. In the latest major victory for Progressives, a Democratic Socialist, Angie Nixon, has won the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate in Florida. Nixon defeated her Democratic opponent, Alex Vindeman, a moderate who had raised 16 times as much money. She now faces a sitting Republican, Senator Ashley Moody, who is favored to win the general election in heavily Republican Florida. And the Trump administration is pushing ahead with a plan to open nearly 45 million acres of national forests to road construction and logging, by eventually repealing protections that have been in place for a quarter century. The administration argues that the change would help thin out forests and therefore prevent wildfires, a claim that experts say is highly debatable. Building more roads inside forests, those experts warn, draws more people whose actions cause most forest fires. Multiple environmental groups are expected to file lawsuits seeking to block Trump from repealing the protections. Today's episode was produced by Austin Chothervady, Stella Tan and Adrienne Hurst. It was edited by Devon Taylor and contains music by Mary and LaZana, Diane Wall, and Pat McCusker. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for daily. I'm Mike Ababar. See you tomorrow. [BLANK_AUDIO]