WAYS TO BRACE FOR A SUPER EL NIÑO

INTO today’s polycrisis of wars and oil shocks, the World Meteorological Organization has dropped a climate bombshell: there is an 80 percent chance a significant El Niño will take hold by mid-2026, with odds rising above 90 percent that it will persist well into winter.

- SANJAY K SRIVASTAVA

A few models go further, flagging a possible ‘super’ event—Pacific waters warming more than 2°C beyond normal. That has not happened since 2015-16.

For most countries, this would be a headline. For India, it is a livelihood emergency in waiting. Roughly 42 percent of India’s workforce earns their bread from farming, and the southwest monsoon accounts for 70 percent of the rain the country receives. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has already lowered its seasonal rainfall estimate twice. The probability of El Niño conditions prevailing through the June-September season now stands at 92 percent, with the phenomenon expected to gather muscle as the months go by.

Walk into any rain-dependent village in Vidarbha or Kalahandi and ask what a 70-mm shortfall in rainfall means. It means the kharif sowing gets delayed, then gambled upon, then sometimes abandoned. It means a family already spending half its income on food watches prices climb. It means the moneylender’s ledger grows thicker.

The physics behind the damage is straightforward, even if the consequences are not. El Niño warms the central Pacific, which in turn scrambles a vast atmospheric loop called the Walker Circulation. Normally, this loop helps pull moisture westward toward Asia. During an El Niño, it weakens. High pressure settles over the subcontinent, the humid updrafts that power the monsoon lose energy and rain-bearing systems thin out or stall.