El Niño: Understanding the risks and acting before disaster strikes

Hello and welcome to AFC News. The podcast that brings you the analysis and the news from the AFC Network. I'm Paulo Grevero, be your host today. We will be talking about El Nino. Every climate story we hear in the last few weeks and months leads back to El Nino. I'm confused. I don't really understand what this is. And to clarify where we're going, what it is and what FRC is doing about it, we have Jonathan Stone with us. Hello, Jonathan. Hi. He is the manager of climate resilience and environment here at FRC. So welcome. Jonathan, I'd like to start with the confusion. We're hearing about super linear, super charged weather events and everything climate related seems to be pointing towards this phenomenon, which is not new if I understand correctly. Can you give us a little bit of clarity? Yeah. So it's confusing for a few reasons because there's a few different things at play. I think it's also confusing because sometimes I feel like we make climate and some of these things are little too complicated. There are really complicated things that you need to know if you're modeling things as a scientist. But for people like you and I or general public or our volunteers, quite nice to kind of break it down. So I'll try and do that. Thank you. It will offend some meteorologists listening to this. I'm sorry about that. Well, I'm sure they'll be able to survive this. Yeah. And they can write in and we can have a chat. So there's like the small sea climates. Let's call it that, right? And this is this is kind of like kind of a few months to a six months variations and let's say natural variations and how the world works. And this happens because the world is a dynamic system with loads of different things in play. So small sea climate is things like El Nino. It's always happened. And it might happen because of different changes in the Earth system. And it's a well known process. There's also big sea climates, let's say, which is climate change. As you and I know it. And that's this accelerated process of change to the Earth system, primarily or exclusively driven by emissions of greenhouse gases, common dark side methane and stuff like that. So the kind of human changes that have happened since the industrial revolution, which is incredibly clear in the scientific record. So with El Nino and this year and emergencies that we face with the IFRC and with our communities, you get both processes coming in at the same time. You get El Nino, small sea climate and climate change, you know, big sea climate. Now, how these two things interact, I'll kind of break down a little bit. So please El Nino itself, the most simple explanation of it in a way is that in this area, if you imagine kind of like the Pacific, kind of, you know, South America, the sea there, the Pacific to the west, normally there's some trade winds that blow out across the Pacific in the direction of, you know, towards, I don't know, what's out there. Samoa. The Atlantic as islands, Samoa, those kind of things. That's normal. Every few years, those trade winds weaken a little bit. Now, the listeners will know that the ocean is kind of dominated by currents. And these currents actually really affect our weather. And the super interesting thing on that is that for, for some meteorologists, there's not really much of a difference between the ocean and the atmosphere. We see, because we see water in liquid and water in gas, like in the atmosphere, is very different things. But actually, they're kind of quite linked, very, very closely linked. So when these currents slow down, you get quite big changes in the atmosphere. And that's what happens with El Nino. Every couple of years or every few years, if these winds, which blow the water, slow down a little bit, then you start to get an accumulation of warm water in one area. It's almost like if you're pouring hot water into a bath and it's not mixing, if you stop the mixing, you get a whole load of warm water staying in one area. Of course. And that's what El Nino is. It's warm water staying off that coast of the South Pacific. Why does that matter? Well, because if that water's not moving across Pacific, then it starts to change these atmospheric processes and the whole kind of atmospheric system across the globe shifts and changes. Now, this has happened, like all the way through the Earth history, for as long as there's been oceans, there's been kind of this kind of thing. What does it do? Well, it changes what is the norm. So some places get warmer, some places get a bit cooler, some places get wetter, some places get drier. So if you're a farmer in East Africa, when you normally plant in an El Nino year, it might be different to the normal. So you're used to planting it a certain time of years. It, the rains might be delayed. Or if you're in the monsoon, you might get a way weaker monsoon in India, which of course affects like rice plantations, all those kind of things. So this is what El Nino does, is it changes the global system, it makes things a lot more uncertain. And so with a year like this, when we are talking about super El Nino, super charge El Nino, whatever terminology we find out there, which is getting every day more colorful, my understanding from what you're saying is that this normally occurring dynamic just becomes harder, stronger, and it's even harder to predict when the ride time for plantation, for example. Yeah. So good question. So is it harder to predict? In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. What, what there is though, is a lot more, a lot more dynamism in the system. There's a lot more uncertainty. The swings between normal variations get way wider. I think that's the point. So it gets more extreme. So that's with El Nino. And this one is particularly more extreme than, than they're really, then they're really has been, for as long as we're able to measure it. And now the measurements are a bit tricky of it. So it's much, that that area of hot water is much hotter and much more extensive than, than we've seen before. That's why people are calling it a super El Nino, people are calling it a Godzilla El Nino. Whatever terminology you want to put to it, that's fine, as long as we're engaging people. That, however, is also matched with the fact that we are now in, cross a global average almost a, or beyond, a 1.5 degree warmer world above pre-industrial levels. And this, this is the, the kind of the, the really tricky interaction. Way more uncertainty, way more extremes with an climate that is already like supercharged for weather extremes. So, and I think this is something that connects to the work we do every day as I ever see. How does this affect countries and communities that already are suffering from, as you mentioned, droughts, food insecurity, perhaps conflict, and other disasters, or long crises, long emergencies you were seeing. How bad is it? And what can we do to sort of contain it? Yeah, so, I mean, it's really bad. And if you were to look back in history at some of the biggest food security crises or famines, many of them are coincided with El Nino, many of them are also coincided with periods of conflict and prolonged kind of challenges. So, it's very concerning. So, if you, if you are a person who is in a very vulnerable situation, maybe you don't have much income, maybe you've had to move from your home, maybe some other emergencies made you move. If you then on top of that add a drought or unpredictable floods where you might lose more things, your ability to sustain life, livelihood, feed your family, you know, is dramatically reduced. Like, you're not, there's already a lot of people who don't have a lot of resilience. This extra uncertainty and the ability to cope with that really puts a lot of people into a very difficult place. That said, I think when I started working on some of this stuff and properly engaged with El Nino, I would say that in the last like 10 to 15 years, we have dramatically developed as a sector to be able to deal with this in the best way that we can. So, it would kind of arrive with a bit of a surprise kind of and like, oh, no, what do we do? It's changing stuff. Now, this year when we started getting the signals of this and we spoke to some of our national societies, there might be an El Nino coming. They were like, yeah, we know, we've already met, we've already put our plans in place, we're already ready to go, we've already been in communities and talked to them about it. That's fantastic. It's amazing. So, I think, yes, it's a lot, lot harder with big El Nino, big changes of climate, but people are much more prepared, much more aware. You said something, sorry to interrupt something about signals. Can you impact this for our audience? What kind of signals are we looking at? What do we hear? What do national society hear as well? For that El Nino, might be coming. Yeah, it's an interesting thing because it's basically that this water gets warmer and warmer. You can see it, right? And it's kind of this like little red blob that spreads across when you look at the maps. Now, there's a difference between the point that it is officially passed a threshold to be El Nino and what the rest of us can see as a progressing trend, right? And the organisation that has to declare El Nino or not is, I guess, the World Meteorological Organization, and they declare it on a threshold, right? But in advance of that, as we start seeing ourselves going towards it, we can say, "Hey, look, it's likely to be on El Nino. It's likely to be a very strong one." Now, El Nino itself means the child, probably no. And it's actually related to the fact that normally this pattern reaches this point around Christmas time. So it's kind of like religious connotations in that, some bit around the time that Jesus arrived, the child. So that's kind of linked with December. So it's interesting because we've been planning for it all the way along. But all the way up to the point that it's declared, there are still impacts, because as it's not like a binary on-off thing, it slowly changes. So for example, with our funds, we've already had five, we have these anticipatory action. So like, based on early warnings, we do early responses. We've had at least five for drought already this year, which we can see a strong El Nino signal for. So this is where plans were in place. A trigger was met for, it's essentially not enough rainfall, and then we release funding and support for people to, I don't know, whether it's cash grants, or it's new seeds, or different ways of dealing with it. That's very interesting. In the fact that national society are prepared and they can see it coming, well, it gives them a lot of latitude to be able to respond before it becomes a full-fledged crisis. Exactly. And to really meet communities where they're at and to help, so it's less of a surprise. Now, I think the impacts are still very bad. The climate change impacts on top of that are still very bad, but I think there's an awful lot we see, our volunteers or just, you know, people in communities. There's an awful lot that people do when they're not surprised. And so I think that's the most encouraging thing about this year is El Nino isn't so much of a surprise, and the impacts of it will be less of a surprise. And I think once you know that, you can start doing things about it. Of course, if you know what's coming, you can be prepared, but also act accordingly. We as IFC, on top of technical expertise and support, what do we do? We release funds, how does that work? Can you just walk me briefly through that? Yes, so maybe, maybe kind of three layers, right? So the first layer and the biggest layer, which I think is the most important, is how we help or work with communities and your average, your normal citizen to take their own actions, right? So the ideal thing is that people themselves can act within their own resources and they're better prepared. So for that, we do things like we have this fantastic system where we have these early warning messages, which are, it's not just El Nino is coming or there might be a drought, but it's, when this happened, you might want to do XYZ, you might want to delay your planting season, you might want to be prepared for a flood. So they're kind of, they're called these "what now" messages, like "what do you do now?" And it's really cool because we have great collaborations with, for example, Google, where we have, in some countries, we have these messages agreed, and then Google boosts them on their kind of, you know, search engine page. You'll just kind of see them appearing there. Wonderful. So for example, like, within the last few years, we've reached a hundred million people with these kind of messages. So that is a, that's just one area through the technology, but obviously in communities we're doing that. So that's, that's the biggest, most important thing, is that. And this is across the globe, not just one specific region. Yeah, it's, it's not everywhere. We're working on that, but, um, but it's across the globe, this is our approach, is helping, is making sure that people can take their own actions. That's the first thing, that's the most important. It's, it's a very high impact low cost. The second one is that governments themselves are prepared, and national societies as exiliaries are ready for things like this. So we see national societies having really great conversations with governments. For example, in the Americas, I think they had a conference in El Nino, gosh, when was it? Maybe, maybe even June. So way before it's been with over a thousand participants from different governments, different organizations, they all got together, they got in the same room and they said, what do we need to do? And that in a central America in particular, it is called the dry corridor anyway. And during El Nino, it is, it is a dust bowl, you know, it is very difficult for people. And as you know, there's a lot, you know, there's migrant kind of roots through there as well. So it's very, very challenging. But by getting in the same room with governments, you can start to make joint plans. So it's not sporadic action. And then the final thing, the kind of pointy end of the pyramid or the sharp end of the spear, is this humanitarian response. And that's where our funding comes in. So we have a few things, mostly around our draft fund, which listeners will, we know, will know about from before. Absolutely. And within that, we have a few things. So one is this anticipatory action. That's really cool. It's like early warnings, pre-gray plans. So like, you know, if you have this percentage below rainfall for X months, then you'll trigger a drought. If you have, you know, X millimeters an hour of rainfall predicted, you might trigger a flood once. Of course. And then we get going. So before the disaster hits, people get cash grants or they're able to move really great. There's also one for where the warnings are less planned for. It's called the imminent draft. And this is like, oh, there's a massive cyclone coming, which has been turbocharged by El Nino, which is happening in the Pacific. Let's release some funding because people might need to move. They might need to board up their houses. They might need to tie down their roofs. So there's that. And then, of course, when the response, if a crisis does hit, like a flood, and there's been no early activation, we have the normal draft response fund, which kind of come in. And then, of course, if there's a huge emergency, then we as IFC and the other network do. So this layered response of things, there's also insurance on top of that is, is really fantastic. So I think what I'm very encouraged by is that the pipe to get support to people is really great. And it's not very leaky. And that is very different to the situation collectively. We would have been in about 15 or 20 years ago. That's fantastic. I mean, it feels like that what's needed is to keep on getting funding to make sure that this machine can keep on working and working better and better and better and expand. Absolutely. And I think, and in particular, it's that funding in the layered ways. Yes. So what we work very hard on, my team in particular, is to make sure that all those things are joined together. So that wherever you put money into the system, whether it's for that citizen bit, which is very high return on investment for the for the money, or into the very more emergency humanitarian bit, and that it all works together. So we don't get duplication. So always more money equals more responses. However, we are in a situation globally where like, there's way more humanitarian demands than there is supply of funding. And that, and that is really where this early warning comes in. It is really getting back to that of like, if you know an advance that it's going to happen, you can start doing something about it. And that is the most cost effective way. Fantastic. This is really fascinating. And thank you for this. Well, we are at time now. Thank you, Jonathan, for coming. And thank you for giving us this, this analysis information. And thank you for listening. If you want to know more, contact us at media at, at IFC.org. And that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to IFC News.