More extreme weather could be on the way.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is issued in Alnino watch.
Jez El Nino has become very popular again after forecasters with Noah declared its arrival in the Pacific Ocean.
Some people are now.
Asking if California is in for another wet winter.
Almost two weeks into the Atlantic hurricane season and ten days since we had the first name storm Arlene, and it's official Noah's declaring al Nino is here, yeh.
If you've been thinking the weather and the effects of climate change have been extra volatile lately, droughts, wildfires, you name it, well, race yourself, because the arrival of the first al Nino in almost four years is expected to cause new kinds of upheaval across the globe.
If we looked at North America, for instance, what you would see next winter in the al Nino is you would see a wetter, stormier part of the southern United States, for instance, and a drier southern tier of Canada.
Scientists suggesting El Nino causes trillions of dollars in lost economic growth could be more expensive cup of coffee, or you might be thinking twice about that block of chocolate the next time you're in the super market isle.
I'm West Kasova today on the Big Tag Bloomberg's Brian Sullivan and Ben Sharples on what al Nino has in store for us. Brian, for the past three years, we've been experiencing this global weather pattern known as Lanina. Now that's ended and we're about to enter into El Nino again. Can you explain to us what an al nino is and how it's different from a lanina.
So al nino is when the surface of the the equatorial surface of the Pacific Ocean warms and the atmosphere above it reacts to it. And then lannina is when most of that area is cooler, and there's also a reaction to it. But because of the fact that you have warm and cold, you have different reactions in the atmosphere. And it's that reaction in the atmosphere that actually changes the weather systems around the world.
And why does that happen.
Part of it is just simply because the Pacific Ocean is so big, as one US government expert told me, you know, it's just an accident of geography. The equator rotates slower than the rest of the globe. Right, if you're at the north pole, then you're spinning around much faster, and if you're at the equator, it moves slower. And the Pacific Ocean is just so huge that there's enough time for those anomalies the warm or cool water to pile up in that area and then change the atmosphere above it.
Brian, can you just generally explain what's the weather like when you're in an al nino and what's it like when you're in a lanninia.
If we looked at North America, for instance, what you would see next winter in the alninia is you would see a wetter, stormier part of the southern United States, for instance, and a drier southern tier of Canada. That would be one example. You would also see drier conditions across Brazil where they grow a lot of the coffee. You would see drier conditions across Southeast Asia as well as South Africa. In La Nina, you kind of get the opposite of that. So in La Nina, the southern
United States, for instance, will be dry. The Pacific Northwest and southern Canada will be wet. There'll be drought in southern Brazil and Argentina, which has been really plaguing corn and soybean crops there for years actually, and then you would probably get some wetter conditions in Brazil. So basically what you're seeing is shifting of drought and flood back
and forth. It's just swinging of the pendulum. So if you're in drought during in El Nino, the pendulum would shift and you would be in flood during La Nina or vice versa.
So even though we some times think of Lianninia as the kinder of the two because it's cooler, the weather patterns themselves are still really extreme and potentially harmful.
They can be completely destructive. If you look at the drought in California that has gone on for three years that was driven largely by Vannina.
And yet Ben in your story, you rate kind of the world is bracing for this new El Nina. Way is it considered to be so much more potentially harmful than the Li Nina we've all been living through.
El Nina tends to add more inflationary pressure due to to high commodity prices, and higher commodity prices are typically due to those droughts and flooding that Brian has touched on. There's a wide range of crops that can be impacted. We're talking from wheat, corn, rice, coffee, cocoa in West Africa, and if they're significant damages to those, you know, it could be more expensive cup of coffee, or you might be thinking twice about that block of chocolate the next
time you're in the supermarket. All but when you look at where we've come also, we've seen the world is recovering, it's trying to regain its footing from the COVID nineteen pandemic. In a monthst that, you have the Russian invasion of Ukraine and that specifically hit commodities like oil, wheat, corn and that sort of stuff. So it's heaping that inflationary pressure on top of events that have already come. So we're in already in an environment where we're experiencing above
target inflation in many countries. So el Nina just adds that a little bit extra. When countries and economies are trying to regain their.
Footing, Brian, how do they know when an al Ninia year is coming or when a lie ninia? What is the cycle?
There is an array of booies that stretch from South America all the way across the Pacific Ocean into Indonesia, and those are constantly measuring the temperature of the water as well as the atmosphere conditions above it. They use satellites as well, they have boats that go out there and take a look at things. So basically, if they start to see a trend in the temperature of the water, they start to look for signs in the atmosphere that the al Nino or the La Nina cycle may be starting.
And that's the directions of the winds, for instance, across the Pacific Ocean. So if the winds are blowing from South America towards Asia, then you're going to get La Nina, because that's going to pull the cold water up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and spread it out across the equator. And likewise, when al Nino happens, those winds get weaker and that allows the sun to just bake those waters and the equatorial Pacific and then just
get hotter and harder and hotter. So there's a lot of different signs out there that people are watching constantly.
If you really want to know if El Nino has hit. Just look to the waters off Peru and the anchovy's there. Historically, it was a dead giveaway when El Nino was rolling in because the anchovy catch was less than what it would be in previous years. It's because the anchovies go they dive deeper into the cooler waters. They don't like the hot waters, and it makes it harder for them
to the catch. And that became initially as part of one of the indicators as to this whole phenomenon that we know El Nino.
So al Nino got its name because this migration of the anchovies happened around Christmas time. The fishermen in this area noticed that it was happening at Christmas time, so they referred to it as al Nino or the little boy. The christ child was born on Christmas, and that's where it came from. So the opposite, of course is a girl. If you have a boy, you have to have a girl. And la Nina.
And how is climate change impacted El Nino or the strength of it. How often this cycle occurs.
So originally, years ago, decades ago, they thought that El Nino's would become more common under the climate change regime. Under the global warming, because you know, warm ocean, you would have more al Nina's. But what they found in the last twenty years that there's actually more n Ninia's, and there's a lot of academic research going on right now is to try to figure out why that's happening.
There's a number of interesting things though. If you took the water temperature that would demonstrate on Lannina now, that would would demonstrate the cool part of the Pacific Ocean now, and you went back in time fifty years or sixty years, that water would be warm enough to trigger an El Nino back in those days. So what you're seeing with that example is that the oceans are actually getting warmer
and warmer and warmer. But al nino and La Nina itself doesn't depend on the actual warmth of the water. What it depends on is how different the water is to each other. So if you get an area that's relatively warm in the Pacific Ocean, but it's cooler than the water on either side of it, then you will
get a La Nina. Likewise, if you get a part of the Pacific Ocean that's actually quite a bit warmer than the water on either side of it, you get that al Nino because you need that differential in the temperature to really dart the engine and get the things going.
Then you mentioned earlier about how these forceful weather patterns can affect the price of food, the ability to grow crops. How have previous al Nino's affected the food supply?
Crops are vulnerable to the weather. All it takes is a little bit of change, a little less rain, and you've got a little less Let's say, for example, wheat. One of the examples is Australia recently reduced its forecast for the nation's wheat harvest and they are predicting that is primarily due to lower rainfall due to El Nino, So that'll be a lower wheat crop this year, and that feeds into the global narrative of supply for wheat.
For example, there are healthy supplies within sort of the European basket, but you get sort of dense in supply. El Nino is a reason we spoke about Russia before. That was a reason. And incrementally, if you take supply out of system, prices rise and that feeds through into inflation. It leads feeds into GDP growth from anywhere from Brazil to Australia to India, and it has a huge effect. I mean, people are repaying a lot of money for staples in many areas of the world at the moment.
Brian. One thing you write also in this story is that this spike in heat leads to a huge surge in demand for electricity to cool homes and other things. How do they anticipate this El Nino is going to affect just the power grid and energy.
Over the past few years. You've had trouble in California and particularly in Texas when this spike and heat comes along because it puts taxes to grid. Many of these places have a larger percentage of renewable energy online now than they had before. So when you get a really hot day, when you anticipate that the megawattach is going way up, you're going to have to start shifting electricity
around the grid to make up for that. Now, if you have one of these massive heat waves, which you've seen for the past few summers in a row, you can't really start grabbing electricity from somewhere else because everyone is hot. The only way to deal with that in a lot of cases is to actually ask people to go offline, or you have rolling blackouts, which has happened before, or in the extreme cases, the Communist government of China actually told people to shut down using electricity and they
closed factories. So there's a lot of stress on the system worldwide when these things happen. And especially if you get combination of these stuck weather patterns, these big high pressure systems that just sit over an area and they bake and bake and bake the place, you're going to see a lot more stress on the grid conditions.
The US is just called an El Nina's we're just on the cusp of El Ninyu. And yet across Asia we've seen it's hot. It's stifling hot. Countries from Thailand to Bangladesh to India have already broaken temperature records. We've seen in China the heat is could turning hydropower, so that's affecting aluminum output in China. In parts of Vietnam, they've also gone into rolling blackouts. And this is already this is pre El Nino, and you know El Nino, China, Bangladesh,
this is the factory of the world. Canon, Apple, Samsung all produce various bits and pieces in these areas, and they're already facing conditions where there's blackouts in Vietnam, a key area for a key manufacturing areas up in the north. There are already stresses in the system already, and we haven't seen the worst of El Nino yet.
After the break, Al Nino could stir up a big storm for the global economy. Then you mentioned earlier about how El Nino can cause a spike in inflation. How else does it affect economies? What does it do to say gross domestic product are just the general output of a country.
There's been some recent modeling done from Dartmouth scientists suggesting El Nino causes trillions of dollars in lost economic growth. They've done some modeling on some the bigger El Nino events previously in nineteen ninety seven, ninety eight, that was a bigger on Inuo event, and they found that it set world GDP back by five point seven trillion dollars. The age two eighty three El Nina reduced growth by four point one trillion, So it's big. It hurts GDP.
So you know there you will get the immediate inflationary pressure from the high commodity prices that have been damaged due to drought to dry conditions, less rainfall, but the flow in effect and the hit to GDP is even larger than what the immediate effect is.
So we talked a bit about how El Nino will affect energy supplies, in particular electricity. We're starting to see Apple and Tesla, which depend on huge amounts of electricity, the whole tech sector looking at possible sure, which is how are other businesses responding to these potential disruptions caused by El Nino.
Sadly, you know, the winner is fossil fuels. A lot of the time, especially in parts of Asia, in hot periods in parts of Europe as well, a lot of people or a lot of companies have relied on diesel generators to make up that power short is, to ensure that manufacturing or their production isn't affected by rolling blackouts. So again it becomes a world reliant on fossil fuels. Diesel generators plug that gap when we start to find ourselves losing power due to blackouts.
Brain we're all seeing these wildfires in Canada. We've seen wildfires in recent years spread across the globe. Is there a relationship between La Nina, between al Nino and these kinds of really big increasing fires and droughts and other climate events.
There definitely are. If you look at the large wildfires, for instance, that raked across Australia a few years ago, those are directly tried to a drought caused by al Nina. If you looked at some of the large wildfires that went across the western United States in the last few years,
those were tied to droughts caused by Li Nina. And the fires in Canada, for instance, while not really caused by al Nino and Linina, will probably be made worse next year because al Nino brings drought to southern Canada. You have these parched forests already, they're going to get even more dry, and next summer you have lightning strikes, you'll have more fires, and it'll just get progressively worse.
I think the one way to think about the relationship between climate and weather is that climate sets the table and weather delivers the meal. We get. The extremes coming from weather events such as hurricanes or typhoons or heat waves or floods or droughts or whatever, they're all made worse as the climate gets warmer and warmer and warmer.
I was talking to a climate scientist about the recent heat wave in Asia in April, and he mentioned that a heat wave of that severity is typical of what we see toward the end of an el Nina, and this is happening pre on Nina. So that just gives you an understanding of what climate is doing to temperatures even without the effects of an al Ninu event.
Brain one thing that happens when we head into the summer is the hurricane season starts, and we've seen some pretty devastating storms in recent years. How might El Nina affect that?
Almina might actually help the Atlantic hurricane season, simply because the changes in the atmosphere bring wind sheer across the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, which will tear apart budding tropical storms and hurricanes that are moving into that area. And as you know, I mean a storm, a hurricane, or a tropical dorm and the Gulf of Mexico can really disrupt energy prices in the United States, it can disrupt supplies, it can disrupt production.
The place where it doesn't help, however, is in the Pacific. You've often seen more typhoons in the Pacific Ocean. You see them curving up towards Japan more often, so Japan may actually be under the gun for some really strong typhoons at the end of the summer.
When we come back to the human cost of Al Nina, then one thing we haven't talked about is how it just affects people and people's health.
A big feature of El Nino is is drought, and we've seen drought, particularly across Africa, kill a lot of people. There was in twenty fifteen sixteen high malnutrition rates, force displacement. You had nearly two dozen nations issuing humanitarian appeals of more than five billion dollars route and famine, and typically in countries that aren't really well equipped to deal with these sort of health issues. You know, usually it's poorer
nations that the feel the bigger brunt of it. We touched on it earlier, but you know, the haze and the smog from plantations that fires, especially across Indonesia and Malaysia, has in the past drifered across the Philippines and across Singapore, and more recently twenty nineteen twenty twenty wh hared the bushfires in eastern Australia. Now, while that was considered globally a week El Nino year, conditions were set for a huge bushfire season. We've seen respiratory problems in kids, newborns
and stuff like that. So public health is also a big impact, not only the loss of crops and commodities, but public health is a key aspect or a key feature of El Nino.
And then, since this happens cyclically, is there anything that governments do to kind of prepare for it so that there aren't commodity praise sharks and everybody is suddenly scrambling.
I mean, governments can stockpile, they can put themselves in a position where they adequately have adequate stocks, but I mean that can only go so far the world. The globe will get stretched very very quickly when commodities are especially hit across all across the world and you have various events, the caveat there being. It all depends on the severity of the Old Nino. But we are already seeing countries like Australia reducing that they're there forecast harvest
for wheat. We've also got Thailand they usually plant two types of rice crop. They're only planting one this time around, so they put preparations in place as best they can, but there's only so much you can do depending on the well brain.
You mentioned at least one good possible thing that could come of El Nino, which could possibly break up hurricanes in the Atlantic. Are there any other possible benefits, like a reason why maybe we should welcome an al Nino instead of just being kind of terrified about it.
California has suffered under drug for the last few years. It was actually reversed a little bit this winter. But Annel Nino, for instance, would actually help California stay out of drought for the coming year. And there are other areas such as the crop growing areas of Argentina and Brazil. Southern Brazil, they were in drought which was driving up corn prices, which was driving up souybean prices. Well, they should get more water this year, they should be fine,
the crop should be fine, yields should go up. So there are benefits to this in various parts of the world.
And how long should we expect this cycle to last until once again it flip flops and we're back with La Nina.
Usually they start breaking up sometime around March April May. You'll see them. They'll peak between December January February, and then they'll start to break up in March April May. The ocean will return to a neutral state and then the cycle may start again. Usually you don't get too El Nino's in a row. It's more common to get two La Nina's in a row. In recent years we actually had three Lindon News in a row. So there's a good example of that.
Brian Ben, thanks so much for coming on the show, Thanks for having me, Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Ergolina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink.
Federica Romannello is our producer. Our associate producer is zeneb Sidiki. Hil de Garcia is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidron. I'm wes Kasova. We'll be back on Monday with another big take. Have a great weekend.