WILD WEATHER: History suggests a ‘Godzilla’ El Niño could be on our doorstep

It’s impossible to predict exactly what will happen during the El Niño event now looming, but previous patterns have given rise to alarm among scientists. And other factors darken the picture, too.

Southern Africa’s history is heavily marked with the spoor of the El Niño weather phenomenon. And with a potentially monster version expected to emerge in the coming weeks, the trail it points to is mostly one of hunger, economic hardship, environmental woes and calamity.

No two El Niño events are the same, and even intense ones in the recent past have not always heralded crippling drought. But climate scientists warn that the signs this time round are extremely concerning.

This El Niño, they say, could rival the intense event of the late 19th century that triggered “the Great Famine” on a global scale, killing millions of people. And its scythe sliced through southern Africa.

“The 1876-78 Great Famine impacted multiple regions across the globe, including parts of Asia, Nordeste [Northeast] Brazil, and northern and southern Africa, with total human fatalities exceeding 50 million people, arguably the worst environmental disaster to befall humanity,” a team of scientists said a decade ago in a ground-breaking paper presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

“This extremely severe and widespread drought was largely caused by an El Niño that exceeded the extreme intensities of the 1982-83 and 1997-98 El Niños...

“The climatic conditions associated with the Great Famine arose from natural variability, indicating a similar event could occur in the future and simultaneously induce drought conditions across multiple major grain-producing areas.”

This ominous forecast has taken on an alarming sense of urgency as scientists warn that the looming El Niño – pegged to emerge between now and July – could be a “super” or “Godzilla” event that will rival the colossal one in the late 19th century.

El Niño arises from a warming of surface sea temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.

“The El Niño event now likely to develop... has a high chance of becoming strong to very strong,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources. Swain said this would be amplified by climate change, which has now seen global temperatures rise about 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – a threshold regarded as a tipping point into catastrophe.

In response to Daily Maverick’s queries, Swain added: “Because of the Earth’s long-term warming trend, caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, each subsequent strong to ve