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Scientists predict the formation of an El Nino this summer, a natural weather phenomenon that drives above-average global heat and makes natural disasters more intense in some parts of the world.
A new study finds there are also strong economic consequences for an El Niño, which threatens to slow the global economy by up to $3 trillion.
The planet's weather over the past three years has been dominated by the opposite extreme of El Niño, La Niña, which has had a cooling effect on the globe despite the effects of climate change.
The transition to El Niño, which is characterized by warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean, coupled with accelerating climate change, means a wide range of worsening risks could occur. These impacts come at a surprisingly high price, according to the study, which was published in Science in mid-May. By the end of the century, El Niño cycles could drive a whopping $84 trillion in economic losses.
"El Niño is more costly than we thought," says Christopher W. Callahan, a doctoral candidate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and one of the study's authors. "The main reason for these high costs is that the effect of El Niño is continuous. It hits and lasts for a while.”
The researchers analyzed two previous El Niño cycles in 1982 and 1997. They found that in the five years after each of those El Niños, the weather phenomena reduced global economic growth by $4.1 trillion and $5.7 trillion in 2017 dollars.
The mechanisms by which the weather cycle affects economic development are different, because the impacts of El Niño vary by region. In South America, for example, Callahan says he and his colleagues found that extreme rainfall driven by El Niño floods infrastructure and leads to financial damage that lasts for years—rebuilding damaged infrastructure is often a multiyear process. Drought in Indonesia and Southeast Asia during El Niño leads to wildfires, which also damage homes and infrastructure, leading to economic losses.
While these trillion-dollar losses are significant, they are not felt as acutely as a global pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis brought entire sectors of the global economy to a halt and led to hundreds of millions of job losses. The economic consequences of El Niño are more subtle because the weather event leads to slower economic growth overall.
The study's findings highlight the need for more global investment in climate resilience and adaptation, particularly in low-income countries that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and El Niño.
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