‘Risk multiplier’: super El Niño looms over Cop31 as climate pattern fuels global disasters

Strongest El Niño in centuries adds urgency to UN climate talks as vulnerable countries face ‘compounding’ crises

If the galloping pace of the climate crisis isn’t enough to spur countries to act at UN climate talks under way in Turkey, there is another major threat heightening its havoc: the strongest El Niño event in at least 1,000 years.

The “jaw-dropping” El Niño, a naturally recurring phenomenon where the eastern Pacific heats up every few years with temporary but global implications, has provided added urgency to wrangling at the Cop31 summit over climate funding for vulnerable countries that are having to scramble to respond.

Already, warping global weather patterns have fuelled huge wildfires and crop failures in Indonesia, coastal inundation in the US, severe drought in Sudan and severe flooding in countries including Ecuador and Somalia. “We are supercharging our weather and El Niño will be a risk multiplier,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

Drought has ravaged the Marshall Islands, a small Pacific atoll country which relies heavily on rainfall for its water. “It’s a compounding crisis, we are trying to prepare but the drought has already hit and it’s on top of having to deal with rising seas that threaten our homes and drinking water,” said Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, which has declared a state of emergency.

Last year, wealthy countries agreed to triple the amount of adaptation finance to poorer countries most vulnerable to floods heatwaves, wildfires and other damaging climate impacts. Yet just a fraction of the $305bn a year needed by 2035 is being delivered, with rich nations consistently lagging in providing climate finance.

This shortfall will be sharply felt in the coming year as El Niño takes its toll. “It’s so frustrating as countries that have done the least to cause climate change are being left with bills we can’t afford,” said Jetn̄il-Kijiner.

“This El Niño is adding stress and we have a limited capacity to respond,” she added. “We need a lot more money for adaptation and for loss and damage, billions more than we are getting right now. They [wealthy countries] say there’s no money but it’s going to AI, it’s going to the military. Just not on climate change.”

A cascade of different crises are expected to hit as the El Niño peaks in December and then reverberates throughout next year, which is almost certain, with the boost from El Niño, to be the hottest ever recorded. On land, there will be heatwaves, crop shortages and either too much or too little rain, while in the oceans corals will likely bleach through heat stress.

“It’s won’t be any joke, it will feel like accelerated global warming,” said Bill Hare, a climate scientist and chief executive of Climate Analytics. “We can fully expect there will be more humanitarian disasters linked to food, water, drought and in some places extreme floods. There doesn’t seem to be the right recognition of the scale of the threats.”

UN officials are particularly concerned about the situation in east Africa, due to the exacerbated drought which will force more people to move. The United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) predicts there will be as many as 3m displacements across just four countries – Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda – due to this El Niño.

“We are very concerned as the forecast for El Niño this year is the worst one ever,” said Antón Leis García, assistant high commissioner of UNHCR.

“There are so many places around the world where forced displacement is prevalent but if you were to zoom into just one area it would be the eastern horn of Africa,” he added. “The maize crop production in Kenya is already dropping by 40% which means there is less food for the refugees moving there and less capacity for Kenya to absorb more of them.”

Campaigners at Cop31 said this unfolding emergency means countries should quickly act.

“People living with the climate crisis cannot afford to wait for another round of diplomatic promises,” said Mohamed Adow, founder of Kenya-based thinktank Power Shift Africa. “You cannot protect a harvest with a pledge. People need resources on the ground.”