How El Niño Could Threaten Millions with Starvation

As this year’s El Niño forecast becomes increasingly clear, drought-parched Californians are hopeful that the pattern will bring much needed rains to the abnormally dry region.

But around the world, the looming El Niño pattern could drive extreme weather patterns and continued droughts, putting millions at risk of starvation due to low agricultural production and lack of water, according to a report released earlier this month by Oxfam.

El Niño is a weather pattern that occurs when ocean temperatures across the equatorial Pacific are abnormally warm, driving extreme weather elsewhere.  Some weather forecasters believe that this year’s El Niño could be as severe as the 1997-98 El Niño, which is estimated to have caused the death of some 23,000 people.

Already, droughts along Africa’s eastern coast have left millions without food.  In Ethiopia, poor rains have forced some 4.5 million residents to seek food aid, while in Malawi, floods followed by drought have cut the maize harvest by more than a quarter, threatening between two and three million with hunger.  Drought has also reduced Zimbabwe’s maize harvest by more than a third, threatening some 1.5 million with hunger.

“Over the next few months the El Niño will attain maximum strength,” the Oxfam report read. “This will coincide with the coming rains in Southern Africa, due from November onwards. Meteorologists predict a high probability of below-average rains again as a result.  A second successive poor rainy  season across Southern Africa will bring serious food security problems next year.”
...
“El Niño has the potential to trigger a regional humanitarian emergency and we estimate as many as 4.1 million people are at risk from water shortages, food insecurity and disease across the Pacific,” Sune Gudnitz, head of the Pacific region office of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told the Guardian.  “Drought conditions would further complicate the humanitarian situation in countries that are just emerging from the devastation caused by tropical cyclones Pam, Maysak and Raquel.”

Forecasters say that warming ocean temperatures — linked to climate change — could make strong El Niño events like the one expected this year twice as likely in the future.

Read more at How El Niño Could Threaten Millions with Starvation