El Niños Are Predictable. We Should Prepare for Their Possibly Disastrous Consequences.

As we head toward winter, the good news for those who shiver at the thought of cold weather is that temperatures are likely to be warmer for people who live in the nation’s northern tier.

You can thank the cyclical weather pattern known as El Niño for that.

But for other parts of the planet, the forecast is not nearly so agreeable. For some regions, it might be disastrous. Increased rainfall is likely in South America and severe drought in Australia, Indonesia and parts of southern Asia. Already there has been deadly flooding in Peru and India, and in Australia, where it is spring, officials are warning of an especially dangerous fire season this summer.

And just this past week, Hurricane Otis slammed ashore on the southern Pacific Coast of Mexico as a Category 5 hurricane after explosively intensifying. El Niño may have played a role in that transformation over a scant 24 hours; the warmer sea surface temperatures associated with the weather pattern provide favorable conditions for hurricane development in the eastern Pacific.

The human toll of these El Niño repercussions is immense. It is also increasingly understood. As we enter another year of El Niño, one that could be “historically strong,” the challenge is on for rich nations to coordinate and deepen their assistance to developing countries before they face these foreseeable consequences.

El Niño’s warming builds on top of the already warmer average temperatures that come with climate change. This makes El Niño’s ancillary impacts — higher food prices, more infectious diseases, and even civil war — increasingly more likely, and dangerous. It also provides a warning sign of what is to come as climate change worsens. Our research suggests that this year’s El Niño could lead to events like crop failures that push up to 6.8 million children into severe hunger.

El Niño is a predictable phenomenon. We know how it generally works and how and where it tends to affect people and livelihoods. These forecasts can be used to help prevent damage to food systems, power supplies and, most important, human health. If we don’t learn to use these forecasts to target assistance and prepare for predictable weather and climate events, how will we ever confront the more unpredictable consequences of the changing climate?