This El Niño Is About To Cause a Global Catastrophe

0:00When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. You've all heard about El Nino, the El Nino event that's spreading this warm water across the Pacific.

0:35is raising global temperatures and is unleashing this extreme weather. We want to devote this podcast to it because it really is shaping up to be basically a catastrophe, a global catastrophe. Yeah, this isn't just a record-breaking El Nino, it's a record-destroying one. We're looking at perhaps sea surface temperatures rising to 4 degrees C above average in parts of the Pacific. That's 60 % higher than the previous record. so that's like running the 100 meters in six seconds or something that's smashing i trust you on the math there roughly speaking it's smashing the record absolutely and so there's all these knock-on effects that are going to happen this is the thing that you might just think oh it's an el nino but then there's these effects on marine life that we're going to get into on rainfall in the amazon and we already know that you know the amazon's on the edge of this tipping point that could tip it into savannah.

1:29Then there's the heat from El Nino, which is predicted to kill half a million people just over the next six months. From New Scientist, this is the world, the universe and us. I'm Dr. Penny Sarshing. And I'm Dr. Rowan Hooper. Two of our climate journalists have been reporting this story and they're joining us this week, Madeleine Cuff and Alec Loon. Welcome both. Hello. Hello. Let's start then with the really stark finding published by the Climate Impact Lab at the University of Chicago, a projection of 450 ,000 deaths in the next six months. Yeah, and the awful thing is that is just the start because that's for the Southern Hemisphere and that will be spring in the Southern Hemisphere but El Nino will still be going on by the time we get into spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

2:11So then there's going to be probably another wave of deaths then and especially probably Pakistan and India will be, you can imagine they'll be hit pretty hard. This projection uses the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts to estimate how many more people than usual could die as a result of heat in the southern hemisphere caused by El Nino. And they've gone for the sort of middle in the range of possibilities. So it represents a moderate view of what could happen. The moderate view. And that's only heat related, right? So there's also famine, wildfires, infectious disease, flooding, all those things that are influenced by El Nino.

2:53So the total death toll will be higher, sadly. The message they're putting out at the moment is that governments should prepare now, especially for these at-risk and vulnerable groups in particular locations and young and the old who are also affected. And Maddy, I always find myself assuming that this is just the climate crisis ramping up. But I know climate scientists will say El Nino is a natural climactic event, but we've never had one like this. Right. So surely we can say this is part of the climate crisis or can't we? Yeah, no, you're both right. It is very easy to conflate El Nino and climate change.

3:35They're not quite the same thing. The Pacific Ocean is basically in this constant pendulum between La Nina and El Nino states. So this swing to El Nino is a natural phenomenon. We've known about them. They've been going on for thousands of years. And it's perfectly normal for us to be having an El Nino. But what's not normal is this is a very, very strong El Nino in its own right. It's probably almost certainly going to be the strongest in history. and there is a debate among scientists that El Niños are becoming more intense as global temperatures have climbed. That's kind of still an open debate but the science seems to point in that direction and that could be because we're forcing oceans to store so much more heat.

4:17But what we can say for sure is that the impacts of El Niño, so the droughts, the floods, the storms that we can expect over the coming months, they will be exacerbated by rising global temperatures because you've got this phenomenon that a warmer atmosphere intensifies rainfall and drought. So it's happening against a backdrop of a warmer world, which means we'll feel it much more keenly. So there's already that sort of baseline of a warmer world. So then anything that's worse comes on top of it. Yes, exactly. Even if it's not being intensified. We're primed to feel it more. Yeah. Am I right in sort of sensing there's almost a little bit of joy in the sort of climate denier camp about an extreme El Nino?

4:56because it almost sort of distracts us from climate change. We can go, oh, look, you have these natural patterns and sometimes they're awful. I guess there's a danger of that, that it sort of muddies the water and it confuses the public as to, you know, what's natural, what's climate. The best way I've heard it described to me by researchers is that this El Nino loads the dice for much more extreme weather. So it's going to be very hard to pinpoint, like did this particular flood come about because of El Nino? But I think we'll be able to see a pretty clear pattern over the next few months as to, you know, the impact that this is having.

5:32And you've also been looking at how, you know, this is a global event. We talk about the Pacific, it very much starts in the Pacific, but it could affect us all. Yeah, what happens in the Pacific doesn't stay in the Pacific. This release of heat and moisture that we see from an El Nino basically changes atmospheric circulation patterns around the world. So it has a global impact on where rain falls and how heat dissipates across the world. So globally, the strongest signature we're going to see is extreme heat. So like we were talking about before, there will be record-breaking temperatures going into the end of this year and through into next year.

6:07It's pretty much certain now that 2027 will be the hottest year on record. And it's pretty remarkable that we can say that now, having the year not even started. It has not even started and we've just had a horribly hot year. Yeah, but the forecast is just so clear. so I think everybody in the world should just brace themselves for just feeling a lot hotter and that will obviously come with some quite severe risks for ecosystems, human health, agriculture, food supplies and then there are a few regions around the world that will feel I guess the brunt of El Nino impact so one of those areas is California where heavy rainfall and storm surges are expected and this is unfortunately for California combined with a peak in this 18-year tide cycle.

6:49So they're also going to experience these king tides this winter alongside El Nino storm surges. Oh my God. What is an 18-year king tide cycle? So tides kind of rise and fall on an 18-year cycle and these king tides are hitting their peak this winter, which coincides with a rise in sea levels that's caused by El Nino plus the increased risk of winter storms in California. So there's some very, very serious worries that there will be quite intense coastal flooding across California this winter. And the state has just declared a preemptive state of emergency to help kind of prepare for that. The other places that are very affected on the brighter side, US East Coast should have a quieter hurricane season.

7:37Australia might experience quite severe heat, drought and bushfires. We've seen wildfires in Indonesia as well. That's also a result of El Nino dampened monsoon season in India. So these impacts will kind of flare up globally over the next few months. Right, because the peak is when? November? El Nino will peak in the Pacific Ocean in around November, December time. But it's got quite a long tail of impacts. So we will see the knock-on effects of how that affects things like rainfall and heat around the world going well into next year. And not to be too what it means for your weekend about it, but it's quite hard to know what it means for the UK because we're so far away.

8:20And in the past, we've talked a bit on the pod about it could go one way or it could go the other. Yeah, the UK and Northern Europe more generally is, I guess, relatively insulated from the impacts of El Niño because we're so far away in those teleconnections, those kind of knock-on influences on weather patterns are quite remote. What we can say is there's an increased risk that we will see a wetter and stormier start to winter, which in some ways could be a good thing because we need a lot of rain in the UK and Europe to replenish our groundwater and reservoir levels after the drought we've just had.

8:55but it could also bring some flooding. But compared to the kind of scale of impacts that we'll see in other parts of the world, I think it will be pretty muted in Northern Europe and the UK. And I guess maybe the way we will feel it is through disruption to things like food supplies because other parts of the world will get hit more severely. OK, your report on this is coming out in the mag. And I just want to pick on the Amazon, though, because you said that Vegas thing. People say that about the Amazon, what happens in the Amazon doesn't stay in the Amazon as well. And El Nino could really have a bad influence there, couldn't it?

9:31Yeah, the latest forecasts for rainfall deficits over the Amazon are that it will be very, very severe and that that will be kind of a pinch point for El Nino this year. That obviously means if you don't have enough rain in the Amazon, the forest dries out, You've got a higher risk of fires. And it just weakens this forest that is already kind of approaching, like you mentioned, this climate tipping point. So it could be very, very bad news for the Amazon. Yeah. And I'm sorry to add to that, but there's a presidential election in Brazil on October 4th. And so we've had Lula in for the last few years.

10:10But the challenger now is Flavio Bolsonaro. You recognise the name? I recognise the name. The son of Jair Bolsonaro, the now jailed former president. And the indications are that if Flavio wins, he would carry on the same sorts of policies that his father did, which were really bad for the Amazon. And yeah, they're neck and neck in the polls. And so with this sort of tipping point, we're all worried about the Amazon stopping, ceasing to be a rainforest and tipping over to Savannah instead, which obviously would be tragic. But like you said, that doesn't just affect the Amazon. That would affect us all.

10:47Yeah. So the Amazon, it's a bit like the Arctic. It's a huge local thing, entity, but it has an outsized effect on the global climate. So if something happens to either of those systems, it does have a knock on effect. And of course, the Amazon is a globally important site of so much biodiversity. One kind of glimmer of hope there is that I did speak to an ecologist in Brazil who was actually quite positive that the younger Bolsonaro won't win. Even though they're neck and neck in the polls, he thinks they won't win. And there's also this talk of Trump. It has been the far right in Brazil have been reaching out to the U.S.

11:25to try and get some interference going on and help swing their election. At the moment, at least the guy I spoke to was quite positive about that not happening and Lula hanging on. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast.

11:59Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. So aside from politics, there's not really much we can do in the short term anyway about El Nino and rainfall and how it will affect the Amazon, except sort of, I guess, contemplating extreme measures like geoengineering. And Alec, that is what some people are calling for, geoengineering, in order to protect marine environments as El Nino bites. That's right. There was a study out, a comment article out by some really prominent scientists. I mean, it was a real list of heavy hitters putting this article out.

12:35A lot of people I've interviewed for previous articles. And they were saying that we shouldn't just research this El Nino and monitor it. We should think about taking emergency measures, interventions into the ecosystems we're talking about to try and protect some of this biodiversity or protect some of these species. And they were specifically talking about the ocean. They had a number of different ideas they were raising. They were careful to say that we shouldn't rush into massive geoengineering deployment, but this could be an opportunity when we would test maybe some geoengineering measures among other things.

13:11Where's their time to get up and running and even do a test on a small scale at this point? So I think the things they suggest fall into different baskets. Some of them could be done immediately. So, for instance, fishing quotas was the first thing they talk about. But something like geoengineering, yes, it would be. I mean, we don't have the technology to necessarily ramp that up quick enough to prevent this El Nino. But the argument they were kind of making there was that this El Nino presents basically an experiment. It presents a laboratory to test whether a geoengineering intervention could prevent the effects of extreme heating on ocean environments.

13:50And there's different ideas about how to do that and different ways that people have tried to do that. And we've covered it before, actually. I wrote an article a couple months ago about the idea of marine cloud brightening could actually shave off. We talked about four degree temperature spike in the Pacific that we're expecting. We could shave a degree or two off that with something like marine cloud brightening and turn a super El Nino into a fairly moderate El Nino. Look, we've talked a lot about we've got to be really cautious with geoengineering. That's why we've not even done any real tests to speak of because of the extreme caution people have over it and how controversial it is.

14:30But there are also tipping points. And if we go past them, not just in the Amazon and the Arctic, but the marine tipping points, right? That's what you've been reporting on. We might not have the opportunity to test it because we've already gone past the tipping point. Yeah. So a thing that was in the news recently, but kind of maybe was overshadowed by a lot of the stuff is that the ocean has just set a new temperature record, hit over 21 degrees average sea surface temperature across the global ocean outside of the poles in August, which is really warm for an average sea surface temperature.

15:06And the odd part is that it came in August because normally ocean heat really reaches a peak in the southern hemisphere summertime. So more like, you know, December, January, February, March, because there's so much more. There's less land. There's more water in the southern hemisphere. So that's when you see the real ocean heating. And yet in northern hemisphere summer, we saw this ocean heat record. So it's almost certainly going to be broken again in the next couple of months as the southern hemisphere goes into summertime. So the ocean is really feeling the heat. It is reaching a lot of ecosystems that are reaching a real breaking point.

15:43Coral reefs is one that we often talk about in cover. Corals don't do well when there's really warm water around them. You can have these mass bleaching events. We've had several mass bleaching events. Almost every Super El Nino has been accompanied by a mass coral bleaching event. That's why Australia has been leading the way really on this geoengineering research into marine cloud brightening, the idea of spraying seawater particles, tiny droplets of seawater and salt into the air, making the clouds brighter. They reflect more sunlight and could basically keep the sun off the Great Barrier Reef.

16:17So it's meant to be a slightly more localized geoengineering intervention. And that's really what they're talking about in this paper. They're not calling for stratospheric aerosol injection where you'd shade the entire globe. They're talking about marine cloud brightening around the Great Barrier Reef or, you know, very, very small interventions. Like, for instance, there have been experiments now going on. There was one recently in the Florida Keys where they were putting a shade, a floating shade above coral to just prevent sunlight from reaching a certain coral reef. So the idea that we could do perhaps some more localized geoengineering to save certain ecosystems or even to take species out of the water and put them away for safekeeping until this El Nino is over.

17:03I mean, just, you know, the scientists. I'm making a walk. Yeah, I mean, and this has been done before actually with an endangered fish in Tasmania where they just took it out of the ocean during a heat wave and put it in a tank and then reintroduced it. But, you know, one scientist I spoke to really kind of called this all into doubt and said, you know, look, even if you save this endangered species or even if you save this coral reef from the current El Nino, you know, the trajectory is up, only up for ocean temperatures. You know, it's not going to necessarily survive in the long term. And, you know, you might also, these are ecosystems, right?

17:41So let's say you save a couple of fish or you save a couple of pieces of coral. When you put them back in the environment after the El Nino, that doesn't mean you get the coral reef back. It's not necessarily enough to save the whole ecosystem. It's starting to feel like we'll have had 20 years of saying these are potentially what geoengineering might be able to do. And then there'll be a tipping point in the research where we'll say, oh, this is what we could have done. It's too late now, but this is what geoengineering could have done. I feel like I don't mean to be rushing us into geoengineering.

18:15You are sounding very pro. I am. I am sounding very pro. And I know all the risks. And there are many. There are many. And even, you know, some people say, well, it could make the problem worse, even locally. Right. But it is kind of feeling like it's now or never, almost now or never. And we've just at least got to do some more tests, right, on a small scale. I mean, that's what these researchers are arguing for is that this El Nino presents a real perfect kind of testing conditions to do this. But other researchers criticize that and say, no, this El Nino is the exact time when you don't want to be potentially adding more harm on top of what's already going on into these delicate ecosystems.

18:58And, you know, I just think that the geoengineering bits are really interesting to discuss. But they started the paper, the comment piece, by talking about fishing quotas, right? And this is something that we already know we need to do more of, right? Reduce fishing quotas. That allows fish stocks to bounce back. That ensures that we have fish to fish in future years, right? It helps fisher people. It helps the ecosystem at the same time. And so, you know, something like just reducing fishing quarters, at least for this super record Godzilla El Nino, seems like a no brainer that we could really do if we could get the politics out of the way and countries arguing about, oh, they have a bigger fishing quarter than we do and so on and so forth.

19:39Well, like California has just declared a state emergency right over El Nino. Why can't we have a ocean wide state of emergency that could kickstart some of these actions immediately? It's a good idea. And maybe a state of emergency could be on the agenda for the High Seas Treaty. The parties will be having their first meeting on how to implement that early next year when this El Niño will be peaking. Hopefully they can really rush that ahead and start to establish these marine protected areas because those would take off some of that fishing pressure, some of that other human intervention or human impact pressure.

20:14And ecosystems won't have to deal with that on top of the El Niño and on top of the global warming we already have. That's all for this episode of The World, The Universe and Us. Do look through past episodes for more on El Nino, the Amazon and many more subjects besides. Thanks to Madeleine Carfant, Alec Loon and thanks to you for listening. And please do subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Bye for now. Bye. Thank you.

21:06Thank you.