The super Niño of 1877 wiped out 4% of the world’s population. The one that is already beginning to form promises to be worse, but what does that mean in 2027?

In the last week, El Niño has become suddenly real. Media like Washington Post, BBC or countless media in Spanish have begun to compare what is coming to us with El superNiño of 1877, the event that “wiped out 4% of the world’s population.” And, stated this way, it is no wonder; The story is simple: “a Child Godzilla is coming and no one knows if we are ready.”

That is why it is important to know what exactly we are talking about and if, in short, “we are all going to die.”

How serious is the matter? As we said a few days ago, between March and May the reliability of ENSO forecasts is usually worse than normal (because the equatorial Pacific anomalies go through their transition phase). That makes everyone go with “lead feet”; but the data is worrying.

Ben Noll of the Washington Post broadcast on May 8 that the North American Multi-Model Ensemble projected “the strongest El Niño on record” between October 2026 and January 2027, with a peak of +3.1 °C in November. They are big words. Above all, because the ECMWF is along the same lines.

In the words of Diego Restrepo, “El Niño is rapidly intensifying, and now 8 out of 10 models point to a super event and four project the strongest one on record.”

And this looks like 1877? That is Noll’s thesis and it has been repeated a lot in recent days. However, the comparison is misleading. First, because, although the models are pointing to a historical ENSO, they are still models. That is, we still have no idea what is going to happen. And, to be strict, until the models recover their full potential in June, we will not know well.

Second because, as argued by Kimberley Reid, from the University of Melbournethe intensity measured in the central Pacific does not translate linearly into impacts. Taking into account everything that has changed in this century and a half at a climate level, the impacts may be completely different.

And thirdly because El Niño of 1877 was not the cause of that catastrophe. Yes, it is true that he set the conditions for it to occur but, as noted Mike Davis in “Late Victorian Holocausts”what killed throughout that quarter of a century were colonial policies.

And what happened in 1877? A strange combination between a superNiño, the Indian Dipole and a tremendously warm North Atlantic between the years 1876–78 caused a global drought. The problem is that, in a world governed by imperialism, grain exports did not stop and, as local resilience mechanisms had been dismantled, a famine occurred that killed some 50 million people.

But the consensus is clear: no matter how intense El Niño was, it caused the problem of its management.

And that, although it may not seem like it, is good news. A few years ago the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published a report with a clear warning: “climate-related disasters” have increased since the 1970s. Specifically, they have multiplied by five over the last five decades.

According to their calculations, in the 1980s, 1,400 incidents were recorded – their tables include extreme weather, climate and water phenomena – and in the 1990s, just over 2,200. In the first decade of the 21st century, 3,500 were reached and during the last decade, which spans from 2010 to 2019, it was close to 3,200.

Curiously, this increase in the number of disasters has coincided with a decrease in the number of victims. The WMO data is clearalso: from more than 50,000 deaths in the 1970s (incidents basically related to climate and water are taken into account) it went to less than 20,000 in 2010. From an average of 170 a day in the 70s and 80s, it dropped in the 90s to less than a hundred a day and to 40 at the beginning of the 21st century.

What will happen? As Restrepo also points out“despite having more information and knowledge, today we have warmer oceans, much more vulnerable ecosystems and collapsing biodiversity. This could generate impacts on health and risks for food, water and energy security.”

However, we are more prepared and more importantly we have time to prepare. The ball is in our court.

Image | Ben Noll

In Xataka | There are more and more extreme weather events. In return, they are leaving fewer victims than ever