Sit Rep - El Nino

Sukh Sandhu,

𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐤𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞'𝐬 𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞-𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐫, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐮𝐳 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐞𝐡𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐬.

Russia is grinding through eastern Ukraine into a fifth year of war.

Gaza sits under a fragile ceasefire after 70,000 dead and half a million still in famine.

Sudan has just entered its fourth year of civil war, with 33.7 million people in need.

Yemen: 23 million in need.

Syria: 16 million.

South Sudan: 9 million.

Venezuela: invaded by the United States in January.

Congo: bleeding under Rwanda-backed M23.

Myanmar: hospitals under air attack.

Haiti: gangs hold the capital.

India and Pakistan: fire across the line. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership, the state of Indian democracy has significantly eroded, nearing a point of collapse.

Afghanistan and Pakistan: fighting along the Durand.

Thailand and Cambodia: clashes at the border.

Defence spending: 2.7 trillion dollars.

Humanitarian appeals: 50 billion, unfunded.

Forcibly displaced: 122 million.

2024: the hottest year ever recorded.

Paris 1.5 degree Celsius target: breached.

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝟓𝟎 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝟏𝟖𝟕𝟕 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧, 𝐢𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔.

NOAA's October 2026 forecast map is now public, and almost the entire Northern Hemisphere is running red. Professor Paul Roundy at the State University of New York at Albany has warned that the developing event could become the strongest El Niño in over 140 years, larger than the 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16 events combined. El Niño (Spanish for "the Christ Child", the name given by Peruvian fishermen in the seventeenth century to the warm Pacific current that arrived around Christmas) is the most powerful natural climate signal on the planet after the orbit of the sun itself. The World Meteorological Organisation confirmed last week that onset is likely between May and July 2026 and will persist through year-end. The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration places onset probability at 61 per cent and assigns roughly a one in three chance that the event becomes a "strong" El Niño by October to December 2026. WMO's Chief of Climate Prediction, Wilfran Moufouma Okia, has cautioned that spring forecasts always carry the so-called "spring predictability barrier" and that confidence will sharpen after April. The honest summary is this: a moderate to strong El Niño is the working scenario; a mega event is possible but not yet certain. Either way, the world should be preparing now.

The economic stakes are not abstract. Research published in Science by Christopher Callahan and Justin Mankin of Dartmouth College estimates that the 1982-83 El Niño cost the global economy 4.1 trillion United States dollars in lost income over the years that followed, and the 1997-98 event cost 5.7 trillion. The same researchers project that El Niño-driven losses could total 84 trillion dollars across the twenty-first century. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific has warned that a single strong El Niño can slow global gross domestic product by up to 3 trillion dollars. The European Central Bank estimates that a strong event raises global food commodity prices by up to 9 per cent within sixteen months. These numbers show up at petrol pumps, in supermarket bills, in grain shipments, and in the household budgets of three billion people who already spend more than half their income on food.

In 𝐍𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚, El Niño typically brings a wetter, stormier winter to California and the southern United States, and a milder, drier winter to the northern tier and Canada. Atmospheric rivers slamming the West Coast become more likely. Drought risk rises across Mexico and Central America, where coffee, sugar and maize farmers are already running low on rainfall. The Atlantic hurricane season is usually suppressed by El Niño wind shear, which is good news for Florida and the Caribbean, but hurricane and typhoon activity increases in the central and eastern Pacific, raising risk for Hawaii, the Pacific coast of Mexico, and shipping lanes across the basin.

In 𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚, the split is sharp and unforgiving. Northern South America, including the Amazon basin and northern Brazil, faces drought, intense heat, and wildfire risk. The 2023-24 El Niño contributed to the worst Amazon drought in over a century, with rivers falling to record lows and cargo barges stranded in dry mud. By contrast, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, southeastern Brazil and northern Argentina face the opposite problem: heavy rain, flooding, landslides. Peru's national fisheries authority has already cut the 2026 anchovy total allowable catch from 3 million to 1.9 million tonnes because El Niño Costero (Coastal El Niño) is warming the waters and breaking the upwelling that feeds one of the world's largest fisheries. The 2023 anchovy season was cancelled outright, costing Peru over 1.4 billion dollars in lost fishmeal and fish oil exports.

In 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚, southern Africa is the region most at risk of drought, with crop failure already a serious concern in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and southern Mozambique during the 2023-24 cycle. Maize harvests collapsed across the Southern African Development Community, and the World Food Programme warned of acute food insecurity for tens of millions. The Horn of Africa often gets above-normal rainfall during El Niño, which can be welcome after the back-to-back droughts of recent years but quickly turns dangerous. The 2023-24 floods in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia killed hundreds and displaced millions. Rift Valley fever, cholera, and malaria outbreaks all surged. The same pattern is the operating expectation for 2026 and into 2027, and this time it lands on a continent already absorbing Sudan's collapse, the Sahel insurgency, and a Congo war.

In 𝐀𝐬𝐢𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜, the geographic centre of El Niño's drought signature, the picture is uniformly tough. Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia all face elevated drought risk. Indonesian palm oil and rice yields fall. Thai sugar production drops. Vietnamese hydropower runs short, as it did in 2023 when reservoirs hit record lows. Wildfire and peatland fire risk rises across Indonesia, with consequences for regional air quality across Singapore and Malaysia, as the world saw in 2015 when Indonesian fires released more daily carbon dioxide than the entire United States economy for several weeks. India faces a below-normal monsoon, already forecast by the India Meteorological Department at 90 to 95 per cent of long period average, the country's first below-normal monsoon prediction in three years. The Lancet Countdown 2025 found that 247 billion potential labour hours and 194 billion dollars in income, around 16 lakh crore rupees (16 trillion rupees), were lost to heat in India in 2024 alone. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology has flagged elevated risk of severe drought and major bushfires for the 2026-27 fire season. The Pacific island nations, Tuvalu, Kiribati, parts of Fiji, face freshwater shortages on top of the rising seas already eating their coasts.

In 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐄𝐚𝐬𝐭, the May to July land surface temperature outlook from WMO is "above normal nearly everywhere", with the strongest signal over southern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and northern Africa. Heatwaves of the kind that killed over 60,000 Europeans in summer 2022 become more likely. Wildfire risk rises across Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Türkiye and Algeria. Tourism, agriculture, and electricity grids all come under pressure simultaneously, in a region already absorbing the energy shock from the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

The 𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬 take the deepest hit. The 2015-16 El Niño triggered the worst global coral bleaching event ever recorded, killing roughly 30 per cent of corals on Australia's Great Barrier Reef in a single season. NOAA's Coral Reef Watch is already on heightened alert for 2026-27. Marine heatwaves, kelp forest die-offs, fisheries displacement, and shifts in plankton communities all follow the warm signal across the Pacific. The Food and Agriculture Organisation, in partnership with France's IRD, has documented these patterns across ENSO cycles. Fisheries that have run for centuries can collapse within a single season.

The 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 sits underneath everything else. The World Health Organisation has long documented that El Niño years bring elevated risk of cholera in East Africa and South Asia, dengue across Latin America and Southeast Asia, malaria in highland regions of East Africa and the Andes that previously sat above the mosquito zone, and Vibrio infections in warming coastal waters. The 2025 Lancet Countdown attributes 546,000 deaths globally each year to heat exposure, a 23 per cent increase since the 1990s. Add an active El Niño to that baseline, and the modelling consistently shows higher mortality, particularly among the elderly, outdoor workers, pregnant women, and the very young. Layer that on top of half-shut hospitals in Gaza, collapsed health systems in Sudan, and overstretched clinics in eastern Congo, and the casualty curve bends sharply upward.

The 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 will be felt by every household on the planet, including those nowhere near a drought line. Wheat, soy, corn, rice, sugar, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, and dairy all respond to El Niño signals. Cocoa hit record prices during the last cycle, in part because of West African weather disruption. Sugar prices spiked for the same reason. United Nations agencies have warned that elevated food inflation in Africa, South Asia and Western Asia will hit poorest households first and hardest, because they spend the largest share of income on food. A 9 per cent rise in global commodity prices is mild for a household in Sydney or Toronto. It is starvation pressure for a household in Khartoum, Sana'a, or rural Bihar.

The 1877 to 1878 El Niño killed an estimated 30 to 50 million people across British India, China, Brazil and the Horn of Africa, in a world that did not see it coming. We are not 1877. The forecasts, the ocean buoys, the satellites, the models, the institutions exist now in ways they did not then. The question is not whether this El Niño can be predicted. It is whether the prediction will be acted on, by governments distracted by wars, by markets distracted by short-term returns, and by populations distracted by everything else on the list above.

What is firmly within human control is preparation: early warning systems funded properly, water storage filled before drought, hospital cooling capacity expanded before the heat domes arrive, supply chain stress-tests run on key food commodities, livestock destocking in pastoralist regions before the rangelands fail, mosquito control programmes scaled up before the disease wave, fire breaks cleared before the dry season, classrooms and worker shelters cooled before the children and labourers begin collapsing, and humanitarian appeals funded as if 50 billion dollars were a serious number, not a rounding error against 2.7 trillion in arms.

The world entered 2026 already at full stretch. The Pacific is now adding the next crisis to the queue. The signal has been received. The next move belongs to the rest of us.

𝐒𝐮𝐤𝐡 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐡𝐮

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