The global economy is losing trillions of dollars to El Niño

The extreme weather associated with El Niño may pump damage to crops, flooding, wildfires and civil unrest, and tens of billions of dollars in direct repercussions over months or a year.

A recent study suggests that the real cost is much higher – estimated at trillions of dollars – as traditional accounting fails to identify the “permanent” imbalances in GDP that have been unfolding over many years and are difficult to identify.

The paper, prepared by Dartmouth Earth system scientists Christopher Callaghan and Justin Mankin and published last Thursday in Science, is excellent. The U.S. Climate Prediction Center announced earlier this month that the “El Niño” phenomenon will occur later this year. These spells, which occur every several years, can bring all things from hot and dry weather in Australia, bushfires in Indonesia, drought-stricken East Africa, a lighter season of Atlantic hurricanes, winter snowstorms in the northeastern United States, and deadly coral heat.

In a world that is about 12 degrees hotter than before the industrial renaissance, El Niño is now practically overheating, and the United Nations World Meteorological Organization considers that there is a 98% probability that one of the next five years will be the hottest in written history.

The El Niño phenomenon – technically a warmer phase for the tropical eastern Pacific – has become a kind of rapid review of some extreme weather conditions that may make climate change a common issue in the coming years.