When people talk about “super,” you anticipate something significant and enormous. The Merriam-Webster dictionary characterizes it as “very large or powerful.” It displays the traits of its category to an extreme or excessive extent. This is how some are portraying the upcoming El Niño phenomenon.
Recent media reports (print, television, radio and online) and contributions from various sectors of the scientific community have emphasized the potential for a robust El Niño event to emerge later this year, thereby heightening expectations of extensive climate repercussions.
A considerable portion of this coverage relies on seasonal forecasting data, including information from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the multi-system ensemble of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Collectively, these systems indicate conditions that may be conducive to the emergence of a “super El Niño.”
“Forecasters are increasingly predicting the possibility that a powerful ‘super El Niño’ will take effect this year,” National Geographic reports. “The phenomenon, which could be the strongest El Niño in at least a decade, may spur punishing drought in some regions and severe storms in others, while also causing the Earth’s temperature to rise.”
Ruby Mellen, the National Geographic writer, quoted NOAA’s latest report stating that there is a 25% chance of a “very strong” El Niño and a 50% chance of a “strong” El Niño, with Pacific Ocean temperatures rising to at least 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than average.
The ECMWF clarifies that during a typical El Niño, the warming waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean will influence which areas experience drought, floods, extreme heat, tropical storms, and sea ice depletion. However, during super El Niño events, which are relatively uncommon and occur approximately every 10-15 years, the effects can be stronger, longer, and more widespread.
“The reason is that the sea surface temperature in this area may rise higher than the average, leading to a strong atmospheric reaction, usually peaking in December or January,” the ECMWF points out.
Canadian journalist Stephen Leahy described the forthcoming “super El Niño” as “the colossal-heat-monster Kraken.” The Kraken is a prominent literary symbol, embodying the mysteries and fears linked to the expansive ocean. It has been featured in numerous literary works, such as Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Leahy reports: “A super El Niño is likely to start up in June or July, with impacts felt in late summer or early autumn. Most places will be hotter, in what is already likely to be a record or near-record hot year. 2027 is virtually certain to be the new hottest year ever.”
The upcoming “super El Niño” is anticipated to elevate global temperatures to unprecedented levels, particularly in 2027, while simultaneously impacting agriculture due to alterations in weather patterns, according to the ECMWF.
Even more concerning is this: There exists a genuine possibility of experiencing the most intense El Niño event in 140 years, forecasts Paul Roundy, a professor of Atmospheric Science at New York State University in Albany.
The potential super El Niño this year is increasingly evaluated to have a far-reaching effect and could persist until 2027. This phenomenon may even surpass the El Niño intensity record established in December 2015, when sea surface temperatures in the equatorial central Pacific region were 2.8 degrees Celsius above the average.
No one knows precisely when El Niño first occurred. Historians trace the phenomenon back to at least the early 1500s, coinciding with the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in South America during severe storms. Records indicate that approximately 400 years prior, there were accounts of devastating events affecting pre-Columbian societies.
In the beginning, Spanish fishermen referred to the phenomenon as “Corriente del Niño.” The term “corriente” refers to the warm ocean current that intermittently flows in the eastern equatorial Pacific region along the coasts of South America. The term “niño” has traditionally been linked to the birth of Baby Jesus, as it is observed around the Christmas season.
The phenomenon was originally regarded as a local occurrence along the coasts of Peru and Ecuador in South America. Over time, the “Corriente” was omitted, resulting in the name “El Niño.”
The Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) states that El Niños are not classified as natural disasters but rather as natural climate variations. They typically manifest every three to five years, with durations ranging from 6 to 18 months. In the intervals between El Niños, there are often phases characterized by a cooling of the surface waters in the same Pacific region, known as La Niña (“the girl”). This entire cycle is referred to as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
The ocean current is characterized as “a mysterious, massive pond of warm, nutrient-poor seawater” which produces a periodic shift in ocean temperatures and atmospheric conditions in the tropical Pacific. El Niño varies the surface temperature of the central eastern part of the tropical Pacific by up to 4 degrees Centigrade, with associated changes in the wind and rainfall patterns. This condition disrupts weather around the world leading to nasty extremes.
The energy reserve that El Niño carries is huge, almost beyond what the mind can fully comprehend. One American meteorologist explains: “(El Niño) contains more energy than has been procured from all the fossils fuel burned in the United States since the beginning of the century – that’s all the gasoline in all the cars, the coal in all the power plants, the natural gas in all the furnaces. It would take more than a million large power plants, at 1,000 megawatts each, running full tilt for a year, to heat the ocean that much.”
It’s no wonder El Niño has a herculean impact around the world. “El Niños have far-reaching effects,” notes GEO, published by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). “The build-up of warm water along the west coast of South America prevents the normal upwelling of cold water from the ocean depths.
“In the western Pacific, the normally rain-bearing cloud systems shift eastward the central and eastern Pacific, bringing heavy rainfall to these areas while countries in the western Pacific, such as Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea experience drought,” GEO adds.
Scientists claim the effects of the changes in wind speed and direction; sea surface temperatures and the depths of the warm water often extend into temperature latitudes. For instance, most El Niño winters are mild over western Canada and parts of the northern US, and wet over the southern US from California to Florida. Southern China is subject to storms and southern Africa tends to drought.
Perhaps one of the worst El Niño events that hit the Philippines happened between 1997 and 1998. “The fury of El Niño began in the third quarter of 1997,” noted a briefing paper published by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquaculture and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD). “El Niño weather conditions struck mostly in the Southern and Central Philippines.”
Among the provinces severely impacted by El Niño were South Cotabato, North Cotabato, Davao del Sur, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, Sarangani, Davao del Norte, Davao Oriental, Davao City, Cotabato City, and General Santos City. El Niño had an adverse effect on nearly 74,000 hectares of agricultural land across 18 provinces.
According to a report published by the Department of Agriculture, the production of palay and corn in the country during the first half of 1998 decreased by 27% and 44%, respectively.
The prolonged drought caused by El Niño was so intense that indigenous communities struggled to find food, leading them to resort to consuming wild yam. In Cotabato province, the drought impacted farmland and livestock; the lumads reportedly survived by eating kayos.
“Every time El Niño strikes, food production suffers,” says Jethro P. Adang, the new director of the Davao-based Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC). “During the climate-related phenomenon, intense heat dries up farmlands, reservoirs and waterways all over the country. Water is needed to grow crops and without it, the crops wither and ultimately die. Those which survived may not give the best optimum level, thus the production is very low.”
Meanwhile, a country needs to understand how this phenomenon affects it, how good the forecasts are and what it can do to prepare for El Niño, suggests Dr. Michael Glantz, author of Lessons Learned from the 1997-98 El Niño: Once Burned, Twice Shy. He cited Peru – where El Niño can mean inundating rains – as a good example of what was done right. The government formed a task force to coordinate activities and obtained money from the World Bank to take actions such as cleaning up rivers and canals and shoring up bridges and roads.
El Niño’s effect may not be the same every time, Dr. Glantz added, but a country that is drought-prone, for example, can still take action if it knows something is likely to happen.
“Now the challenge is how to move from awareness to action,” Dr. Glantz said. “One element of that is ‘climate affairs,’ to try to educate educators in developing and developed countries on how climate variability and change and extreme influence human activities and ecosystems in their countries.”
