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If you query “Super El Niño,” you’ll get a lot of articles comparing the current El Niño to the devastating one in 1877-78, in which 50 million people perished (3% of all of humanity), mostly from starvation, and primarily in India, China, Brazil, and Africa. But is this a fair or realistic comparison to what we will see in the coming months? A lot has changed since then… and then again, some things really have not.
Let’s Start With the Science
The intensity and duration of storms, flooding, heat, and drought are not determined solely by the strength of an El Niño. For example, the 1877-78 El Niño was not any stronger than three other more recent, and far less deadly, ones in 1982-83, 1997-98, and 2015-16. That said, the current ocean water temperature has surged past 3°C above the norm, making the current Super El Niño the strongest ever. The previous record was slightly over 2.5°C. (repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/46581), far stronger than any El Niño in past 50 years, or even the 1877-78 event. So, in terms of El Niño intensity, we’re heading into uncharted waters.
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) also has a big impact. When the dipole is positive, it increases monsoon intensity for India and south Asian countries, thus reducing the severity of El Niño-caused droughts. This is what happened during the less devastating El Niños of the 1980s, ‘90s, and 2010s. However, when the dipole shifts to the negative, as it did during the El Niño of 1877-78, it can substantially reduce the intensity and duration of monsoons, allowing much more severe drought conditions to encompass India and South Asia.
Right now, the Indian Ocean dipole is in the negative phase, like it was in 1877-88. Climatic models are forecasting that it could persist through March, which could cause massive drought conditions throughout Asia. Furthermore, we are seeing an early and very active start to the western Pacific typhoons, which tend to pull moisture away from Asia, further suppressing the monsoons, increasing the potential for severe drought conditions in south Asia.
There is also the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which has been weakening due to the Climate Crisis and could collapse completely as a result. In the long-term, this could make parts of Europe uninhabitable, accelerate sea-level rise for the U.S. Atlantic seaboard, and switch the Atlantic Ocean from a carbon sink, to a carbon source, pushing the planet past a climate tipping point. In the short-term, a weak AMOC promotes more El Niños and intensifies winds in the North Pacific, which could drive more atmospheric rivers toward the West Coast of North America, increasing the amount of extreme rain and flooding in California. (repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/59550).
Climate Change and Food Insecurity
Climate Change has already caused dramatic declines in agricultural yields, contributing to food insecurity in many parts of the globe. Rising heat has made farm work unsafe for much of the year in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, problems that will worsen with the rising temperatures caused by the El Niño. Rising temperatures due to Global Warming, and El Niño, also increase water demands for crops and livestock, hastening the rate at which soils become parched and crops become withered. Meanwhile, rising temperatures also increase nitrogen consumption for plants, forcing farmers to rely even more heavily on fertilizers, which are already much more difficult, and expensive, to get because of the war in Iran.
El Niños can worsen existing marine heat waves, damaging kelp forests, increasing disease and mass die-offs. Peru, in particular, will likely see a large drop in their anchovy fishery, the largest in the world. This will have ripple effects far beyond Peru, as its anchovies are used to produce 20% of the world’s fishmeal, leading to feed shortages for much of the planet’s aquaculture and livestock. Loss of anchovies impacts the entire food chain, as larger predatory fish lose their food source, as do the marine mammals that consume them. El Niños also cause mass coral bleaching events, killing not only the corals, but also most of the other sea life living in the coral ecosystem. This, too, can have far-reaching effects on the world’s fisheries and the availability of marine-based protein, thus further threatening food security. Last year, the Great Barrier Reef experienced its sixth mass bleaching event in less than ten years. (www.barrierreef.org/the-reef/threats/coral-bleaching)
Socioeconomic Factors
In his 2000 book, “Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World,” historian Mike Davis showed that a combination of climatic events, war, and colonialism all contributed to the mass casualties of the 1877-78 El Niño. In the period leading up to this event, millions of peasants around the world had been forced into the global, money-driven economy. Many had previously existed outside this economy, producing at a small scale for themselves and neighbors, bartering for equipment, seeds, and goods they could not produce for themselves. Food that had been kept in village granaries as a hedge against future hard times now had to be sold on the market for cash to buy the things they had formerly produced themselves or traded for. As with the Irish Famine of 1845-1852, Britain, and other colonial powers, continued to export crops and cash from the famine-stricken regions, while refusing to provide any aid to their starving populations. Lord Lytton, the British colonial governor of India, justified this response in India with this Adams Smith quote: “famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconvenience of dearth.”
Of course, drought does not have to result in famine and mass death, as it did in 1877-78. Indeed, today there are “near-record” worldwide stockpiles of food (https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/decades-farm-gains-inventories-strengthen-food-system-against-super-el-nino-2026-08-11/). The Chinese government, in particular, has been stockpiling soybeans and grain in anticipation of El Nino-caused drought and food insecurity.
But what about the rest of the world? Will these stockpiles be shared, to avert mass famine, or horded and exploited for profit, like in colonial times?
War and Politics Threaten Food Security Even Before the Worst of El Nino Hits
The answer should be pretty clear to anyone who is paying attention. We are already seeing severe famine in places like Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and Afghanistan, in spite of the worldwide surplus, and well before the worst of the El Niño hits. Some of this is due to food being used as a weapon, like in Gaza. But other wars, like those in Ukraine and Iran, are exacerbating food insecurity by disrupting grain, fuel, and fertilizer exports. This is particularly a problem for sub-Saharan Africa, which imports 80% of its fertilizer. There are currently 225 million people, in 45 countries, facing acute insecurity. However, the coming the Super El Niño is expected to push another 50 million people into acute hunger, according to the UN’s World Food Program, with the biggest increases in South America, the Caribbean, and southern Africa. (www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/05/el-nino-could-push-50m-people-acute-hunger-next-year)
Then there is Trump’s gutting of USAID, which has already killed an estimated 700,000 people, including over 500,000 children. The overwhelming majority of these deaths have been in Africa (www.npr.org/2026/07/17/g-s1-133651/usaid-elon-musk-rubio.deaths). A Lancet study found that by 2030, deaths caused by USAID cuts will surpass 14 million, with over 4.5 million deaths of children. However, the Lancet estimate comes from extrapolations based on how many lives USAID saved over the past 20 years and does not take into account the added pressures on food insecurity, and on public health, caused by the wars in Ukraine and Iran, nor the impacts of the coming Super El Nino.
Let Them Eat Iceberg Lettuce
Those of us lucky enough to live in affluent countries are not really safe, either. JP Morgan has predicted that food price inflation will nearly double from 2.8% today, to 5% by early 2027. Goldman and HSBC have made similar predictions, in spite of the massive stockpiles of food (https://www.newsweek.com/how-el-nino-could-spark-global-crisis-in-2027-12331811). This will affect everyone on the planet, rich and poor. And it indicates that the oligarchs are not only expecting drought and famine conditions, but that they intend to exploit it with massive speculation, price gouging, and handwringing over the mass casualties that will likely occur.
If you really want to see how the world’s wealthiest people are thinking about the El Niño, checkout some of their websites. They are chock full of recommendations on how to squeeze the most profits from the coming disaster. Morgan Stanley, for example, is prepping investors for investment opportunities in the commodities most likely to face the largest shortages (e.g., sugar, coffee, cacao and copper). (www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/super-el-nino-global-economic-impact-2026) Marketwise is recommending investments in nitrogen fertilizers, shipping companies, and liquid natural gas (LNG), as well as “Reinsurance.” Why? El Niño-fueled droughts wreak havoc on hydroelectric energy sources, increasing demand for LNG. Reinsurance because of the declining insurance claims on the U.S. east coast, gulf, and Caribbean, due to the weakening hurricane season. They also mention the severe disruptions to supply chains, which are already slowing things down in the Strait of Hormuz and increasingly in the Panama Canal (due to drought conditions); as well as the best ways to leverage the disruptions to electricity and water supplies needed for the growing army of AI data centers. (marketwise.com/investing/super-el-nino-stocks-2026/)
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Jenica Lake เหล็ถเลถ
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