Record El Niño set to cause hunger for 10 million poorest, Oxfam warns

This El Niño is made worse by global warming.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/01/record-el-nino-set-to-cause-hunger-for-10-million-poorest-oxfam-warns


Ethiopian children at a food distribution centre
Ethiopian children at a food distribution centre. El Niño events have caused crops to fail in some of the world’s poorest countries. Photograph: STR/Reuters

Oliver Milman
Sept. 30, 2015

At least 10 million of the world’s poorest people are set to go hungry this year because of failing crops caused by one of the strongest El Niño climatic events on record, Oxfam has warned.

The charity said several countries were already facing a “major emergency”, such as Ethiopia, where 4.5 million are in need of food aid because of a prolonged scarcity of rain this year.

Floods, followed by drought, have slashed Malawi’s maize production by more than a quarter, farmers in central America have suffered from two years of drought and El Niño conditions have already reduced the Asian monsoon over India, potentially triggering a wider drought across the east of the continent.

Indonesia’s government has declared drought in 34 of the country’s provinces because of El Niño, while 2 million people in Papua New Guinea have been affected by crops shrivelling in heat in some parts of the country and severe frosts in its highlands.

El Niño is a periodic climatic phenomenon where waters of the eastern tropical Pacific warm, triggering a range of potential consequences for global weather. While parts of South America are typically doused in heavy rainfall, warmer, drought-like conditions are experienced in Australia, south-east Asia and southern Africa.

The UK Met Office has predicted this year’s El Niño could be the strongest on record since 1950, warning that famine could grip west Africa.

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El Niño-like conditions were expected last year but failed to materialise. The El Niño now brewing in the Pacific Ocean is expected to end in January but may, in the long term, become more frequent. Research published in Nature Climate Change last year predicted El Niño frequency could double because of climate change fuelled by the release of greenhouse gases.

Last year was the warmest year globally on record, with 2015 and 2016 potentially set to cause this record to topple again.

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