El Niño’s effects are concentrated in the tropics, but other regions will feel the heat as well.US Southwest It tends to rain, while the north of the country is getting warmer. It has one advantage. El Niño usually reduces hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean.
Courtesy of Christopher Callahan
Tropical countries tend to be the most vulnerable economically due to their proximity to El Niño and their often lower GDP than countries in Europe and other northern regions. For example, the country shown in red in the map above shows that his GDP per capita dropped significantly during the 1997-1998 El Niño event.
In general, low-income countries have a relatively large share of GDP from agriculture that is vulnerable to changes in rainfall, so they have a relatively large loss in the event of bad weather. Subsistence farmers in particular are at risk of not only losing their livelihoods, but also being unable to support their families. The situation is particularly precarious for farmers without irrigation systems, as the drought shock is more immediate.
More economically developed countries tend to have stronger safety nets for the agricultural industry. “If you have a severe drought in the United States and it hits Indiana farmers badly, their crops are insured,” says David Yubilaba, an agricultural economist at the University of Sydney. the study He had studied the economic impact of El Niño, but was not involved in the new paper. “There is a huge policy complex to ensure that farmers are largely unaffected during weather shocks, which is very unlikely in most low- and middle-income countries.”
Callaghan said previous calculations of economic damage from El Niño events were likely underestimated because they only considered damage during years of strong El Niño events. But a new study finds that the effects can last up to 10 years after the warm water disappears. Government money must be spent, for example, on rebuilding infrastructure rather than on technological innovation. “So when economic growth slows down, we have an El Niño-like effect,” says Callahan.when his team factored in losses rear He went on to say, “This event turned out to cost a lot more than we had previously thought.”
Still, this modeling requires additional care because it combines two already complex domains: economy and climate. Scientists still can’t tell when an El Niño will occur and how severe it will eventually become. In a given country he has no way of knowing exactly how rainfall will change after a year. It is therefore impossible to predict with certainty how El Niño drought, for example, will affect rice yields in Asia.
This uncertainty is the reason, Ubilaba says, to start planning international aid to low-income countries now. “People are more likely to suffer in these countries,” he said. “A little head start, even in the last few months, can have a big positive impact down the road.”
Callahan sees the El Niño event as a stress test for a warming planet as climate change intensifies heat waves, wildfires, droughts and rainfall. But it is also an opportunity for governments to step up their preparedness for extreme weather events. “We will need to invest in things like infrastructure upgrades and wildfire management,” says Callahan. “So we think there’s really a win-win here.”
