[0:01]You'll probably no stranger to stories of extreme weather events, floods, wildfires, destruction. And I don't want to alarm you, but this year we are going to have a massive weather event called El Nino, which is when parts of the Pacific Ocean warm up, and that has knock-on effects for the rest of the planet. And this year is going to be one of the biggest ones on record. So today we're going to break down exactly what El Nino is, as well as its sister weather phenomenon La Ninia, and you're going to hear how countries around the world are trying to prepare for it. I'm Hannah and this is what in the world from the BBC World Service.
[0:38]First, let's hear how Nino is affecting you. Here's Drishi in Nagpur in India. Temperatures over here are already crossing 46 to 47° Celsius. Now, what's worrying over here is that earlier people at least got some kind of relief during the nights, but now even the nights remain extremely hot. The temperatures are still touching 45° during the night time. When we talk about El Nino, it can intensify heat waves, delay rainfall and make dry heat conditions even worse. This is no longer feeling like extreme weather. It's actually becoming the new normal for us. Across India, hundreds of heatstroke cases have already been reported this summer and several deaths are being linked to extreme heat. Many people in India still feel we need a much more stronger long-term planning, better urban cooling, more trees, shaded areas, stronger water management and reliable electricity supply. And here's Santiago in Florida in the US. Hello, my name is Santiago Stanski, and El Nino and extreme weather can have very big impact where I'm from, because I'm surrounded by the ocean. If extreme weather becomes stronger, it can affect the daily lives of the people in my region with stronger hurricanes, flooding, beaches are changing, storms feel more intense and environmental problems are becoming more noticeable each year. Now we're going to break this down with our go-to climate and science correspondent Georgia Rana. Hi, Georgina. Hey Hannah. So we've talked about this before, haven't we? I think it was a couple of years ago. Can you explain again, what is El Nino, what causes it? It's really complex, so you've got to bear with me. But the key thing to remember as we go through it is water temperature at the top of the ocean, so sea surface temperatures. They're the way that we understand this pattern and we actually see it emerging around the world every few years. So El Nino is one part of a natural phenomena called El Nino Southern Oscillation, one of those very scientific technical sounding terms, but normally in the Pacific Ocean trade winds blow west along the Equator. So if you picture a globe or a map, sometimes we see those little arrows indicating wind. So normally they're all pointing west and that brings warm water from South America towards Asia. But during El Nino, those winds, those little arrows weaken and all of that warm water is then pushed back eastwards towards the west coast of America. So there's much more uh basically a lot more water in that region and all of that affects global weather patterns. What kind of effects are we talking? What actually happens? I remember reporting on it in 2024 and there was a few weeks when I was working when just a series of different records were broken, we sort of smashed through those records. So that included the hottest day in terms of global average temperatures, the highest temperature the oceans ever reached, and I also reported on a coral mass bleaching event. And all of those things were linked to this El Nino event. Not every one is the same, not every El Nino is the same and the patterns can vary. But on the whole, it can affect temperatures, so global temperatures increase during El Nino. I talked about sea surface temperatures and warm water. El Nino means all this warmer water spreads further through the oceans and stays closer to the surface. So if you think about if you have a bowl of boiling water, sort of imagine that, and then think about the air just above that boiling water, that's going to get hotter. That's what happens with the ocean. So it releases this warm water upwards creating warmer and wetter air. So they don't, they don't make the all areas of the world hotter. Um but in South America, the southern part of the African continent, most of Europe, India, Japan, parts of Australia, they all get a bit hotter. But some parts of the US and Scandinavia and even parts of Australia, they actually get a bit cooler. So that's one of the effects. Rainfall is another major area affected by El Nino. So the warmer water pushes the Pacific jet stream, uh goes further south and east and that brings wetter weather to the south of the US and the Gulf of Mexico. We get some very powerful rainstorms, a lot more flooding. But conversely, the disruption also means you get places with drier conditions, so Southeast Asia, Australia, Central Africa, get much less rainfall and they actually can fall into drought. And we can also get more tropical storms, and but they move around, so we get we don't get as many hurricanes in the Atlantic, but there are more storms in the in the tropical Pacific. It can also affect ocean life and marine life and our food systems, obviously, we all, or many of us eat fish. So everything living in the ocean, fish, whales, phytoplankton, octopus, they all rely on this really complex movement of nutrients through the ocean. Lots of those are in the deeper water, but when the upwelling, which is what this movement of nutrients is, when that doesn't happen because of El Nino, there's basically less food, less nutrients around in parts of the ocean. Which means a lot of those animals can't eat as much, so we get there's less fishing of things like salmon or tuna. And I'm interested in the name, so El Nino means the boy in Spanish, it's got its sister La Nina. Where do these names come from? El Nino, La Nina are were first identified actually in the 1600s, so more than 400 years ago. And it was a group of fishermen in Peru who worked, you know, in the Pacific waters off Peru, who noticed that around Christmas, which is often when the warmer temperatures were, were peaking, there was less fish for them to to fish and so that they realized, you know, their livelihoods were affected. And so they identified this changing ocean temperature and called it La Nina or El Nino and La Nina. El Nino is the boy or the child, La Nina, the girl or the child, but it was because it was at Christmas they linked it to Jesus. So this really powerful, really significant and complex weather event is actually effectively called the Christ Child. And tell me a bit more about La Nina, is that essentially the opposite of El Nino? Yeah, more or less. So, La Nina is when you get colder water upwelling, and to some extent in simple terms, it has the opposite effects of El Nino. So at the moment we're sort of, we've just come out of La Nina, which has been happening over the past couple of years, and we're sort of swinging from that into El Nino. I think at the moment we're probably in a sort of neutral phase, but already at the moment, if we think again about sea surface temperatures, if you look at maps of temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, you can see these sort of moving blobs of red and they're the higher temperatures developing and and coming up to the the top layer of the ocean. So is that really how it works? We kind of go between El Nino and La Nina. Is it every couple of years? I mean, we last spoke about this, you said it was in 2024, right? Yeah, so it is a pattern, so we sort of move in between the two. The episodes usually occurs sort of two to seven years. Normally they last around a year, but they can go for longer. You know, we've we've had around two years of La Nina and now we'll move into El Nino. That could last a year, 18 months, and then we may have a a neutral time and then we would probably go back into La Nina, although not always, you can just have another El Nino off the back of the previous one. People are really worried about this year's one. I mean, I've heard it being called a Godzilla El Nino. What is unusual, I think is about how scientists are talking about it. So as you said, they're calling it a Godzilla El Nino, super El Nino, they're quite strong words for scientists to use, who are normally quite neutral. They're saying it could be one of the strongest on records. That's really concerning because the the strongest ones in the past 50 years have caused global temperatures to rise by about 2° Celsius. What they're saying for this one is it could actually increase global temperatures by about 3° Celsius, and that's all off the back of the global warming we know is happening because of climate change. And there's one perspective that I found quite interesting I was reading earlier, where it was a scientist who was saying, look, you know, we can call it super El Nino, Godzilla El Nino, but what really matters is the background picture of climate change. So human induced climate change has already driven up temperatures by probably 1.5° Celsius, and that will increase. And it's that which which is happening on top of El Nino, which is what really matters at the moment. And arguably is also the area that we can do something about, whereas the El Nino, La Nina is a natural pattern, we can't do anything about that. Are we better prepared than some of these historical massive Godzilla super El Ninos for the one that's coming our way in 2026? It's difficult to prepare for, you know, these are they're quite big changes that you need. You can't suddenly just adapt a whole city to flooding. But I guess because we're already to some extent preparing for global warming for climate change. A lot of these preparations will also help us for the extreme weather that would come with El Nino. Yeah, that that's really, really useful. Thanks so much, Georgina. Thank you, Hannah.
[9:41]If you've got any thoughts or questions about this episode, please do get in touch with us. And I want to read out a comment that we got on another episode that we did with Georgina. It was about how species of wild bees are at risk of extinction in Europe and why they're so important for humans. Now, I didn't actually know, but bees, wild bees pollinate 75% of all of the crops that we eat. And Jim left us a comment. He said that in Peru, bees are legally protected. It's an offense to kill bees. And I had a look at that and it's a particular species of bee from the Amazon that has no sting. So thank you, Jim for that comment and keep those comments coming. That's it from me today. I'm Hannah. This is what in the world from the BBC World Service. We'll see you next time.
