A new El Niño may hit harder than what history has shown

Experts say it will add pressure to an already precarious global system

- CHICO HARLAN

WELL BEFORE IT was understood, the El Niño phenomenon was leaving its marks on humanity.

El Niño is the name given to powerful shifts in Pacific Ocean winds and water temperatures that can drastically transform global weather patterns. Over the centuries these natural patterns have sparked epic droughts and heat waves, and have intensified epidemics.

Some academics even claim to see the fingerprints of El Niño on political and economic crises in ancient Egypt, or on the downfall of the Moche civilisation in present-day Peru, more than 1,000 years ago. And in 1877 and 1878, a famine fueled by El Niño killed millions of people across the tropics, hardening inequities that, as one research paper put it, “would later be characterised as the ‘first world’ and ‘third world.’”

Right now, the world is entering a new El Niño phase. Researchers are warning it could be one of the strongest on record and are invoking this history as an admonition that natural forces, when they reach their highest magnitude, can lead to profound volatility and hardship.

Of course, the current El Niño is in the early stages of formation and might not live up to the hype. But if the forecasts prove accurate, it would be a whopper and its consequences would play out across a world that has grown far more resilient but also has new vulnerabilities.

Compared with those early times, countries today track El Niño events with oceanic gauges and early warning systems. Agriculture is far more sophisticated, and many countries vulnerable to food shocks hold strategic grain reserves. Nobody is predicting large-scale famine.