AI Summary
5 min readThe Godzilla El Niño
In the late 1870s, a series of El Niño events triggered famines that killed tens of millions of people across Africa, South Asia, and China. Now, scientists are watching a new El Niño form that may be larger than any on record since those catastrophic 19th-century events—and it's arriving on top of a planet that has already warmed by about 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Some researchers are calling it a "Godzilla El Niño."
What El Niño actually is
El Niño is a climatic event that happens irregularly—usually every three or four years, sometimes as infrequently as every seven—in which a burst of warmer-than-normal temperatures appears in the coastal Pacific off the coast of South America. That localized warming then scrambles weather patterns across the entire planet. As New York Times climate reporter David Wallace-Wells explains, the mechanism isn't fully understood even by scientists. The field of "teleconnections" has identified statistical relationships between El Niño and weather events in distant regions, but researchers can't always identify exactly what about one weather event is driving another. What they can see in the historical record is that certain things happen together.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:36) **What is El Niño?** - David Wallace-Wells defines El Niño as a recurring climatic event involving a burst of warmer-than-normal water in the coastal Pacific, with global weather consequences.
- 2 (04:58) **The Mystery of How It Works** - The host asks for a simple causal explanation for why Pacific warming scrambles global weather, and Wallace-Wells says there isn't one.
- 3 (05:44) **Why This El Niño Is Alarming** - Wallace-Wells explains the two main reasons scientists are worried about the coming El Niño: the high baseline temperature and the event's sheer size.
- 4 (08:42) **Timeline and Regional Effects in the US** - Wallace-Wells outlines when the El Niño will peak and how its effects will vary across the country.
- 5 (11:27) **Who Bears the Brunt?** - Wallace-Wells argues that climate disasters disproportionately harm the vulnerable, and that wealth is not a perfect shield.
- 6 (12:12) **How This El Niño Compares to 2015-2016** - Wallace-Wells compares the coming event to the last "Super El Niño" and explains why this one is on track to be larger.
- 7 (14:14) **2027 as a Preview of "Normal"** - Wallace-Wells explains how 2027 could show us what everyday life will look like in a decade, as we blow past the 1.5°C Paris target.
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Show Notes
This global weather phenomenon could help make 2027 the hottest year on record. Our friends at The Gray Area explore what the upcoming El Niño season could reveal about the future of our climate.
Guests: Sean Illing, host of The Gray Area; David Wallace-Wells, New York Times climate writer
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