This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
From \u201cThe New York Times,\u201d I\u2019m Michael Barbaro. This is \u201cThe Daily.\u201d<\/p>\n
archived recording 1<\/p>\n
A powerful super El Ni\u00f1o event is right now brewing deep within the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n
archived recording 2<\/p>\n
[NON-ENGLISH] EL Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n
archived recording 3<\/p>\n
El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n
archived recording 4<\/p>\n
[NON-ENGLISH] El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n
archived recording 5<\/p>\n
El Ni\u00f1o [NON-ENGLISH].<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
The meteorological wrecking ball that is El Ni\u00f1o is back.<\/p>\n
archived recording 6<\/p>\n
The Climate Prediction Center gives a 69 percent chance this year\u2019s El Ni\u00f1o may be the strongest since 1950.<\/p>\n
archived recording 7<\/p>\n
The heat released by the Pacific Ocean during that event could spike temperatures into unseen territory.<\/p>\n
archived recording 8<\/p>\n
Making 2027 one of the hottest years, perhaps even the hottest year, on record.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
And this year, it\u2019s already shaping up to be by far the strongest and most severe on record and to wreak havoc across the world. Today I spoke to my colleague, global climate reporter Chico Harlan, about El Ni\u00f1o\u2019s history, its inner workings, and its destructive powers.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Wednesday, August 19.<\/p>\n
Chico, welcome back to \u201cThe Daily.\u201d<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Thank you, Michael.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
So I feel like this episode requires a little bit of a confession that despite a lot of us hearing about El Ni\u00f1o our entire lives and despite pretending what it means and invoking it in casual conversation, most of us don\u2019t really understand what El Ni\u00f1o does, how it works. And I think if we\u2019re going to do justice to a historic El Ni\u00f1o, like the one we\u2019re experiencing right now, we should probably start by actually explaining what it is.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
So El Ni\u00f1o is a planetary phenomenon that is both totally natural and also a huge chaos agent. And at the core, it is something that happens in the tropical Pacific. It is changes that occur there. And to understand those changes, it helps to think about this rectangle that stretches across the equator in the Pacific Ocean. It would basically run from the coast of Peru, Ecuador, all the way towards the International Date Line. You\u2019re almost in the darkest, most uninhabited territory you could find in the Pacific, south of Hawaii and to the north of the small islands, like Fiji and Samoa.<\/p>\n
And normally, these waters follow a pretty predictable pattern year by year. They don\u2019t change so much in temperature. If I can use Celsius \u2014<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
You can. You can.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Got it.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
For the purposes of this conversation, you can.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
OK. Normally, they top out in around May at about 28 Celsius. So they\u2019re pretty warm, and they don\u2019t cool off that much. But as you enter the summer, the Northern Hemisphere summer, they start to cool by maybe a degree, down to about 27 this time of year. So that\u2019s most years.<\/p>\n
And of course, this rectangle is completely imaginary. It\u2019s been concocted by scientists and only for this reason. They\u2019ve realized that when things change or go haywire in this part of the ocean, it affects the entire world to the point where you could almost say that when this part of the Pacific catches a cold, the whole world has a fever.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
And you\u2019re saying in most years, this part of the Pacific doesn\u2019t catch a cold, and the rest of us don\u2019t catch a fever.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
That\u2019s correct. But in an El Ni\u00f1o year, the sea surface temperatures, the ocean temperatures in that part of the Pacific, rather than gliding down, stays high and sometimes even keeps increasing. And if the gap between the temperatures in a given year \u2014 and the usual temperature is 0.5 Celsius, a pretty small threshold \u2014 that is an El Ni\u00f1o. If the gap between the water temperatures is two Celsius greater than usual, then you have a super El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Got it.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
And, Michael, this year we could be heading even for a three-degree gap, which is beyond what we\u2019ve ever seen before.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Right, like maybe a super duper El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Yeah, the terminology doesn\u2019t exist for it.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Well, I want to get back to this year and what all that means. But before we do that, explain why, in an El Ni\u00f1o year, these ocean temperatures keep going up rather than gliding back down like they normally would.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
OK, so let\u2019s go back to this rectangle. Imagine, in a normal year, that the winds above these waters are blowing the warmth away from South America towards Asia. So these waters are staying relatively cool. They\u2019re cooler than the waters in Asia. And there\u2019s cold water that\u2019s coming up to replace the water that was getting blown away. And so you have a nice, cold ecosystem. This is, of course, important to fish and all this other stuff.<\/p>\n
In an El Ni\u00f1o year, that pattern changes quite a bit, and the winds that normally take that warm water away either slow down or reverse. And that is one key element in this feedback loop in which the warm water is no longer displaced. Instead, it starts to build and generate on, you could say, quote, unquote, \u201cthe wrong side of the Pacific.\u201d<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Fascinating.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
And that hot water that\u2019s normally stored on the Asian side can come all the way over towards the South American side.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
And just explain why that is so meaningful.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Well, let\u2019s just remember that the Pacific is huge. So imagine how much extra warmth it takes to warm that body of water by a couple degrees. That\u2019s the extra energy that you\u2019re adding to the room of this rectangle that we initially talked about. And when that happens, you have this warmth that rises into the atmosphere like 10 kilometers, or 6 miles, high. I\u2019ve heard it described that the ocean and the atmosphere are always interacting together in this tug of war.<\/p>\n
And so when you have this extra column of warmth going up there, that changes everything, leads to changes in pressure, changes in winds. And this, of course, can steer storms and steer where moisture travels. Another way of thinking about this, I\u2019ve sometimes heard El Ni\u00f1o described as the biggest reorganizer of the world\u2019s climate patterns, aside from the change in seasons. That\u2019s how big it is.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Basically, the heat in this one crucial place reorganizes, if I can introduce another metaphor, all the organs of the body in the global weather system. And suddenly, the liver is not where it\u2019s supposed to be. The kidney\u2019s not where it\u2019s supposed to be. And I know this metaphor is getting kind of wacky. But it\u2019s not raining where it\u2019s supposed to, and it\u2019s not dry where it\u2019s supposed to.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Right. And that is where the El Ni\u00f1o\u2019s consequences start to play out. For us, the people and animals living on land.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Well, talk about those consequences historically.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
They can be huge. And they were apparent going back centuries at least. I mean, before we even knew what El Ni\u00f1o was. In the 1600s, there were Spanish colonists in Peru who started noticing tropical fish every couple of years strangely washing up on their shores. And so this would happen around December. So they would call it El Ni\u00f1o de Navidad, basically Christ Child.<\/p>\n
And they probably thought it was just some supernatural thing. They would have never suspected that it was part of this global phenomenon. But sure enough, the fingerprints of El Ni\u00f1o were all over civilizations going back millennia. There\u2019s all sorts of theories \u2014 I mean, you can have a fun academic time with this \u2014 that it\u2019s influenced the rise and fall of pharaohs going back to Egyptian times. I\u2019ve even read a paper that it had a hand in the French Revolution.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Wow.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t necessarily sign my name to that. But what we do know is that in 1877, there was a really big one, still before we understood what El Ni\u00f1o was, and that this one coincided with a huge famine that played out in multiple countries. It was a famine that killed 50 million people, estimated, about 3 percent to 4 percent of the population.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Wow.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
One paper that I was reading called it arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity. There were droughts at the same time in Ethiopia, China, Egypt, Morocco, Brazil. India was especially hard hit.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
And scientists attribute that awful situation you just described to some meaningful degree to an El Ni\u00f1o in that season.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Correct. In some places, there was already drought and even bad drought beforehand. But then El Ni\u00f1o came and exacerbated those circumstances. And at the time, nobody could have believed that some phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean was playing out with these global consequences. I mean, people living near the Pacific Coast of South America had been aware that there was this weird pattern that would play out every two to seven years.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Peru and the fish and the name.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Yes, but only in the 1950s, 1960s did scientists start to put together the idea that something was happening, that these events were connected.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
That\u2019s fascinating. So I think that brings us back to this year and this El Ni\u00f1o, which, Chico, you had mentioned already involves a major increase in temperature by historical metrics. Just how severe do we think this El Ni\u00f1o will be?<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
As we mentioned, El Ni\u00f1os normally reach their peak around November, December. That\u2019s when these Peruvians would see the tropical fish. But this El Ni\u00f1o is already big in August, already big enough that if this was its December size, its full-grown size, it would already be one of the biggest on record.<\/p>\n
So what has scientists alarmed, I think you can say, is that it still has months more to grow. And it feels like all but an inevitability to them at this point, that by the time it\u2019s done growing, it will be the largest on record. And that record dates back about 80 years, not like people had temperature-measuring gauges in this rectangle going back into the 19th century. But the best guess, if you talk to scientists, is that this one could be the biggest in hundreds of years.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Wow.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about for 2026 and 2027. And as you can imagine, the consequences of that for the world are huge. And in fact, we\u2019re already beginning to see them.<\/p>\n
[SOMBER MUSIC]<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll be right back.<\/p>\n
So, Chico, talk about the impacts already of this year\u2019s historically strong El Ni\u00f1o, or I guess, super El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Well, already across at least three continents, some of these telltale patterns that typically come with an El Ni\u00f1o are playing out. So you have Panama, which is normally one of the wettest countries on Earth. They haven\u2019t had a major storm since May, and it\u2019s even been raising concerns about the viability of the Panama Canal, because that Canal actually takes water from a rain-fed lake for its locks.<\/p>\n
Then go to Africa. The horn of Africa always gets a crazy back and forth during El Ni\u00f1o, but parts can be very dry. Ethiopia\u2019s highlands, which are very important for feeding the country, have had some of the driest June, July periods on record. Kenya, similar story, really bad maize harvest there.<\/p>\n
And then India, India is another place that is often very dry during El Ni\u00f1os, and it had its fifth driest June. There is a lot of concern also in Southeast Asia and Australia. So the impact is just at the very beginning, but these are some of the first places where we\u2019re seeing signs of these marks reaching across the planet.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
You had mentioned the really severe situation in the 1800s that flowed from the severe El Ni\u00f1o then, and those scenes were extraordinarily grim. Are we on track to see the scale of suffering that we saw back then this year because it is going to be such a big temperature change in the waters?<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
I\u2019d have to say probably not. I mean, nobody\u2019s predicting 34 percent of the world\u2019s population dies because of this El Ni\u00f1o. The good news here is we have gotten really good at agricultural production. Of course, the planet\u2019s population has grown, but so has the efficiency for corn and soybeans.<\/p>\n
India, just as one example, I was reading stories yesterday about how extremely high its stocks of rice and grains are. They\u2019re running out of warehouse space. So countries are much more prepared.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Planning better.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Yes, they are planning better. And they\u2019re far from the only country. But what is going to happen still is that this global system that\u2019s already been facing strains because of oil prices, because of fertilizer prices from the war in Iran is going to be further strained. And that does still lead to real human suffering. I mean, the UN\u2019s World Food Programme is predicting that an extra 50 million people will face food shortages because of this.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Wow.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
So when you see a number like that, it just drives home the point that this is almost tantamount to a war in terms of the human suffering and hunger that it brings on.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
So given the severity of this El Ni\u00f1o, how long is it going to last?<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Normally, these El Ni\u00f1os last about 12 to 15 months.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
I have to say, that\u2019s a pretty long stretch of time a year, a year-plus. But is the idea that once an El Ni\u00f1o passes, then everything pretty much reverts back to status quo?<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Well, some of the consequences are a bit delayed. As in, even though the El Ni\u00f1o arrives in 2026, some of what we\u2019ll be seeing as the most lasting marks will be playing out next year.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Just explain that.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Well, heat. Heat is the biggest thing. The pattern that we see again and again with El Ni\u00f1os is that the year after they emerge, you have the hottest year on record. So let\u2019s just go back in time a little bit. There was a big El Ni\u00f1o that formed in 1997, which was, at the time, the hottest year on record. Well, 1998 beat that record and became the new hottest year.<\/p>\n
Then there was a big El Ni\u00f1o in 2015, which was, again, the new hottest year ever, until 2016 came along. Then there was a smaller but still significant El Ni\u00f1o in 2023, new hottest year ever, stolen the gold medal by 2024, as the El Ni\u00f1o was still playing out.<\/p>\n
Now we don\u2019t know. The record, of course, has gotten hotter and hotter and harder and harder to beat. It\u2019s still unclear if 2026 will be the new hottest year ever. It could. But what experts almost feel certain about, and it\u2019s hard to get scientists to agree on much, is that 2027 will be not only a record breaker, but potentially by quite a big margin. You\u2019re already seeing how this year, which started far off-record pace, has now hit this inflection point, where every day in August is the warmest given date of any year that we know.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Wow.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t true in May, April, going back. July, it started to get extremely hot. August 2026 has hit this record pace. So scientists expect that will continue and even become more intense of a trend into the second half of this year and then for sure into 2027. The number one thing that you say about El Ni\u00f1o\u2019s impacts globally is that the planet gets hotter.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Well, I\u2019m glad you\u2019re bringing up warming temperatures, because this entire time we\u2019re talking, I\u2019ve been thinking about the interplay of El Ni\u00f1o and climate change, global warming. How much do we attribute El Ni\u00f1o itself and perhaps what seems like the growing frequency of it, from the list you just went through, to climate change?<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s first talk about the part that nobody is debating, that everybody agrees upon, which is that the impact of El Ni\u00f1o is becoming amplified, you could say, because of climate change. What climate change is doing in any year is it\u2019s leading to hotter temperatures, and it\u2019s making more moisture in the air. More moisture intensifies flooding and rainfall. Higher temperatures makes droughts happen faster. So El Ni\u00f1o is kind of piggybacking off of that. And so the droughts that would normally happen because of El Ni\u00f1o are more intense, same with the rainfall and the flooding, more intense.<\/p>\n
The big question, the one that you were asking about, is about the physical magnitude of El Ni\u00f1o, the things happening in the ocean. Are those becoming more intense or more frequent because of the way we\u2019re fiddling with the planet? And this is the million-dollar question for scientists. I\u2019ve talked to many of them about this, and they all have strong opinions. And there is almost no consensus.<\/p>\n
The biggest problem with unraveling this question is that in order to understand whether we\u2019re seeing a period of stronger El Ni\u00f1os \u2014 and there\u2019s evidence that we are. There\u2019s evidence that the last 40 years, 50 years of El Ni\u00f1os have been stronger than anything that came over the previous 600. But to really have confidence that something irregular is happening, you really want longer records, and we don\u2019t have that.<\/p>\n
And if you go back longer in time, things get really fuzzy. If you talk about mega events from long ago, well, there was no climate change then. So there is this question that hangs over this event. Is this partly our making?<\/p>\n
Then we don\u2019t know and that scientists, some say yes, some say no. But what they all seem to have is this curiosity that, hey, over the next 20 years, over the next 50 years, we\u2019re going to get a much better sense of whether we are doing this to ourselves, whether we are creating the environment for more intense El Ni\u00f1os. And of course, if big events like this keep coming, then the answer will become clearer.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s where I think we are weather wise. Climate change is making all of our weather more extreme. And here, I\u2019m thinking about the heat waves in Europe, followed by the wildfires in Europe \u2014 we did an episode about that. You were one of the guests \u2014 not to mention the wildfires in Canada that just brought days of pretty awful smoke to my city of New York.<\/p>\n
And now on top of that, we have the worst El Ni\u00f1o on record, which, beyond its immediate disruption and pain, will be even more of that heat in a year. So what a time to be alive. I mean, how do as global climate reporter think about that?<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
It might just be bad luck that we\u2019re getting such a big event this year when we\u2019re already thinking about a time of extreme weather. It could just be that the planetary system is playing a big joke on us and giving us some more extreme weather on top of what we\u2019ve already have.<\/p>\n
But what we can say also is that this event, unintentionally, by raising global temperatures for even a brief period, gives us a little sneak preview of where we\u2019re already going. Next year, temperatures will be higher than what we\u2019ve faced before, maybe quite a bit higher, and we would be getting to that level eventually just by our own making, but not until the 2030s, maybe not until the late 2030s.<\/p>\n
[LIGHT MUSIC]<\/p>\n
So next year, with the heat, with the commensurate more extreme weather that comes with it will be a sneak preview, just a brief one, but a sneak preview into what will become the norm in 2035 and 2036. El Ni\u00f1o goes away, but some of the things we see next year will be coming back for us.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
In the not too distant future?<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
In the not too distant future. [LIGHT MUSIC]<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Well, Chico, thank you very much. Appreciate it.<\/p>\n
chico harlan<\/p>\n
Thank you, Michael. Appreciate it.<\/p>\n
[LIGHT MUSIC]<\/p>\n
You can read more from Chico Harlan and our entire climate team on \u201cThe New York Times\u201d app. If you don\u2019t already have the app, we wanted to let you know that if you download it right now, you\u2019ll get access to all of our journalism free for one month. So give it a try. And we\u2019ll be right back.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what else you need to know today.<\/p>\n
[CHEERING]<\/p>\n
archived recording (angie nixon)<\/p>\n
We show the world what organized people can accomplish.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
In the latest major victory for progressives, a Democratic socialist, Angie Nixon has won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Florida.<\/p>\n
archived recording (angie nixon)<\/p>\n
And we show the world what people of Florida are all about.<\/p>\n
[CHEERING]<\/p>\n
Medicare for all.<\/p>\n
[CHEERING]<\/p>\n
Universal child care.<\/p>\n
[CHEERING]<\/p>\n
Real affordable housing.<\/p>\n
michael barbaro<\/p>\n
Nixon defeated her Democratic opponent, Alex Vindman, a moderate who had raised 16 times as much money. Nixon now faces a sitting Republican, Senator Ashley Moody, who is favored to win the general election in heavily Republican Florida.<\/p>\n
[THEME MUSIC]<\/p>\n
And the Trump administration is pushing ahead with a plan to open nearly 45 million acres of national forests to road construction and logging by eventually repealing protections that have been in place for a quarter century. The administration argues that the change would help thin out forests and therefore prevent wildfires, a claim that experts say is highly debatable. Building more roads inside forests, those experts warn, draws more people whose actions cause most forest fires. Multiple environmental groups are expected to file lawsuits, seeking to block Trump from repealing the protections.<\/p>\n
[THEME MUSIC]<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s episode was produced by Asthaa Chaturvedi, Stella Tan, and Adrienne Hurst. It was edited by Devon Taylor and contains music by Marion Lozano, Diane Wong, and Pat McCusker. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood.<\/p>\n
[THEME MUSIC]<\/p>\n
That\u2019s it for \u201cThe Daily.\u201d I\u2019m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.<\/p>\n
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