Some Nations Are Already Acting: Brazil Has Hired Record Numbers of Firefighters to Tackle Expected Amazon Blazes

Countries worldwide are bracing for what is increasingly certain to be a historic El Niño, with the latest modeling suggesting the 2026-2027 event will be the strongest ever measured, possibly breaking records by a considerable and dangerous margin. International bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO), World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and World Food Programme (WFP) are urging nations to prepare for extreme weather and ensuing impacts to health, food and energy systems. Some nations are already acting: Brazil has hired record numbers of firefighters to tackle expected Amazon blazes.

Peru, hit by disastrous rains, floods and landslides in past El Niños, has declared a state of emergency across 40% of the country. Sri Lanka has arranged water deliveries to nearly 72,000 people across seven districts threatened by drought, and India is focusing on 300 drought-vulnerable districts, setting up agricultural contingency plans and boosting irrigation provisions. The African Union is calling on member states to implement early-warning systems to protect "lives, livelihoods and economies in the months ahead.

But many countries aren't ready: The WFP has made an urgent $202 million El Niño Joint Anticipatory Action Appeal to aid 22 high-risk nations with safety measures. Experts warn that as climate change fuels increasingly frequent and severe El Niño events, more and better preparations will be needed. "We have not learned enough from our experience with previous strong El Niños, Lachlan McIver, health advisor at the WHO-WMO Climate and Health Joint Office, told Mongabay in an interview.

"That is evidenced by the illnesses and deaths … recorded in the most recent ones. El Niño "is contributing to climate variability and climate extremes, and this makes human existence and performance on this planet more unsafe, Hans-Otto Poretner, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II, told Mongabay in an interview. Since the 1980s, there have been three very strong, so-called "Super" El Niños: In 1982-83; 1997-98; and 2015-16. Though no two are alike in impacts, every very strong El Niño supercharges weather systems, bringing heatwaves, intense drought and precipitation, flooding and wildfires.

An El Niño is classified as very strong when sea surface temperature anomalies in the Central Pacific Ocean (known technically as the Niño 3.4 region) surpass 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above the long term average — a point reached by the current event in mid-July. The world's oceans store an estimated 90% of the excess heat energy trapped in Earth's climate system by human-emitted greenhouse gases; El Niño redistributes some of that heat to the atmosphere, bringing extreme, often violent weather. Based on the latest modeling forecast on August 13, there's a 90% chance this year's El Niño (which will likely peak between November and January) will be very strong, while there's a 69% chance it will surpass all past records.

A severe drought in Ethiopia during the 2015 El Niño triggered a humanitarian crisis affecting over 10 million people. Here, the EU and Oxfam, an NGO, deliver a tanker truckload of urgently needed water. Image by ©EU/ECHO/Anouk Delafortrie via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).