In a rapidly heating world, a powerful El Niño is coming our way, threatening to supercharge climate disasters. El Niño is generated when sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific rise by more than 0.5°C above the prevailing average, transferring massive energy from the ocean into the atmosphere. Starting in June, the sea surface temperature difference is now 2.7°C, well above the 30-year average, with a predicted peak of 4°C.
Occurring in cycles, El Niño has far-reaching consequences for weather patterns across the globe, and scientists now believe this year’s will be the strongest on record with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimating a 63% chance of it becoming ‘very strong’ and persisting into May 2027.
Global warming will make this El Niño even more powerful and more unpredictable in its impact. The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation has found that waters beneath the Pacific’s surface are ‘unusually’ warm, with temperatures in some regions 6°C higher than normal. Indeed, as global temperatures continue to climb, increasingly powerful El Niño events will become the norm.
El Niño is set to intensify the effects of climate change we are already living through. In Britain, we can expect a far stormier and wetter winter than usual. As it reaches its peak later this year, torrential rains along the western coasts of the US, East Africa and South America are likely to trigger mudslides and flooding, while the eastern and central Pacific can expect an increase in tropical storms. Hotter, drier conditions will wreak havoc across Southern Africa, Australia, and South and Southeast Asia, fuelling wildfires and droughts. It will make 2027 the hottest year on record.
These conditions will deepen the already dire situation for the world’s most vulnerable. The hunger crisis in Sudan, already the worst in the world, is expected to deteriorate further as El Niño parches the Nile. The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the weather system could push at least 49 million close to starvation by the end of 2027. Adding fuel to the fire, the hottest summer ever recorded in Western Europe has brought droughts that are shrinking crop yields across the region, driving up food prices. Labour Environment Secretary Angela Eagle urges us to prepare for a national emergency by stockpiling essentials such as food ahead of winter. But who can afford to? Not the poor: compared to the start of the cost-of-living crisis in 2021, food prices are already set to rise by 50% by November, a crisis that will leave many working-class people barely scraping by. Meanwhile the Labour government is preparing to announce licences for a consortium that includes Shell to drill for oil in the North Sea Rosebank field, and the same consortium to extract gas from Jackdaw. The fossil fuel monopolies will prosper as the working class suffers. Socialism offers the only chance for humanity to survive the climate crisis.
