Super El Niño continues to strengthen as new forecasts push toward record levels, with Fall and Winter 2026/2027 impacts emerging across the United States, Canada, and Europe
A significant amount of global food supply comes from Brazil (certain grains, especially coffee and soy). When it’s winter across the Northern hemisphere, it’s summer here in the Southern hemisphere. And that’s the thing: we (Brazil) are already facing the effects of this super El Niño, including but not limited to, cyclones. The Brazilian Southern (inc. Rio Grande do Sul), a region mostly responsible for rice production, is a region where floods have became ubiquitous in the latest years. Even though I’m a Brazilian, I don’t quite remember all the observable consequences of climate change and/or El Niño across the Brazilian territory as I’m writing this reply. All I remember for sure is that we’ve been facing climate catastrophes way before this Super El Niño appeared, and now it’s poised to be worse. Where I live, the southeast Brazil, I’ve been noticing more and more unstable climate, sudden and quite dangerous “ciclones bomba” (“bomb cyclones”, or explosive cyclogenesis), strong winds out of nowhere, among other phenomena.
One of the major mistakes that we humans keep commiting is this kind of thinking: “how it will affect my region”, as if the planet Earth wasn’t this interconnected, interdependent ecosystem. There’s this thing, “butterfly effect”, in which “a flap of a butterfly wing in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas”; although the phrase per se is obviously hyperbolic, we do observe when disturbances (from ecological, as in fauna and flora, to economical, as in fewer yield from agricultural activities) on a region inevitably leads to consequences for other regions, no matter the apparent geographic distance, no matter the borders. In fact, Mother Nature does not care about our social construct “borders/frontiers”, and the El Niño, supercharged by the anthropogenic climate change, is a chilling demonstration of this.
I’m not saying it isn’t valid asking about the consequences for one’s own inhabiting geographic region. It’s quite expected as we experience the physical objective reality from inside each one of our subjective perspectives. And, to a certain extent, knowing about the consequences expected for one’s own country (e.g. Germany) even helps building climate awareness (i.e. so we get to be aware of how it’s not something distant from where we’re currently breathing and how it’s gonna affect each one of us).
What I’m trying to say, however, is that we shouldn’t ignore the fact that this is far from a localized matter.
It’s a global matter.
Mother Nature doesn’t even remotely take our political borders into Her considerations. She doesn’t care about how we had split the surface of Planet Earth into 2x2 hemispheres, 24 “time zones” and hundreds of so-called “countries” and “economic blocs”. Birds migrate and fly across hemispheres regardless of our migratory and passport/visa bureaucracies, viruses and pathogens will reach places as remote as Kiribati (see COVID-19 and H1N1, for example; needless to say, climate change leads to increased likelihood of pandemic events)…
When I hear about the typhoons striking China, or the simultaneous drought-flood that happened in Africa, or the heat wave striking Europe, I’m aware of how is connected with mechanisms (including, but not limited to, a supercharged ENSO) that will also affect the state of Minas Gerais where I’m currently sat down to write this reply, no matter how these places are dozens of thousands of kilometers away from me, and I’m aware how those phenomena will take place geographically closer to me as well, and how indeed it already happened when towns within “Interior paulista” (regions within the Brazilian state of São Paulo) recently got practically destroyed by a storm.
See, Earth is this hermetically-enclosed cosmic Petri dish wandering through the void veil of Laniakea Supercluster as She (Earth) revolves around a G2-type star. All the fauna (including this species self-labeled “Homo sapiens”) and flora living inside it have no means of resorting to other Petri dish (despite the fever dream of “colonizing Mars” from a specific wannabe-god Homo sapiens individual) if it’s rendered unable to sustain life due to a broken ecosystem, and a broken ecosystem isn’t limited to Germany or other European countries, or USA, or Canada, or China, or India, or Kenya, or Moçambique, or Brazil, or Kiribati… a broken ecosystem means a broken ecosystem everywhere. This is a fact, a fact we must consider as we get faced by more frequent and harsher ecological catastrophes leading to ever-higher death tolls; hence my earlier reply about this interconnectedness and the need to try and not miss the forest for the trees.
It’s worth mentioning, this community is “World news” and even the linked article, despite being focused on the Northern Hemisphere, mentions how it’s an ongoing phenomenon with worldwide reaches (e.g. “This circulation change affects the global atmosphere”). The emphasis on the global aspects of those phenomena is, thus, a must.
This article doesn’t discuss that, however, it does mention that the global effects of the Super El Niño (SEN) are already being felt.
According to the models in the article, European winter temperatures will be somewhat higher (1 to 2C) than usual. Snowfall in general will be lower, though higher in the Alps. That could support the idea that, like in 2026, early meltwater will fill the Alpine rivers (Rhine, Rhône, Donau) but be depleted relatively early come summer. However, there is no summer forecast yet.
The higher temperatures forecast are just 1 to 2C. That’s warmer but not a lot. Results will be less ice and snow so more runoff rainwater, possibly contributing to a dryer summer. Warmer temperatures are also not great for flora and fauna that depend on winters being cold.
This article doesn’t go into that, but given the SEN it wouldn’t be strange to think that 2027 will be a very hot year. This is also predicted by James Hansen, though he thinks high temperatures are not only a result of the SEN, but of climate change having gone into overdrive because climate sensitivity is much higher than the IPCC seems to think. See also here.
Can somebody give a practical understanding what this means and has meant more Europe?
A significant amount of global food supply comes from Brazil (certain grains, especially coffee and soy). When it’s winter across the Northern hemisphere, it’s summer here in the Southern hemisphere. And that’s the thing: we (Brazil) are already facing the effects of this super El Niño, including but not limited to, cyclones. The Brazilian Southern (inc. Rio Grande do Sul), a region mostly responsible for rice production, is a region where floods have became ubiquitous in the latest years. Even though I’m a Brazilian, I don’t quite remember all the observable consequences of climate change and/or El Niño across the Brazilian territory as I’m writing this reply. All I remember for sure is that we’ve been facing climate catastrophes way before this Super El Niño appeared, and now it’s poised to be worse. Where I live, the southeast Brazil, I’ve been noticing more and more unstable climate, sudden and quite dangerous “ciclones bomba” (“bomb cyclones”, or explosive cyclogenesis), strong winds out of nowhere, among other phenomena.
One of the major mistakes that we humans keep commiting is this kind of thinking: “how it will affect my region”, as if the planet Earth wasn’t this interconnected, interdependent ecosystem. There’s this thing, “butterfly effect”, in which “a flap of a butterfly wing in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas”; although the phrase per se is obviously hyperbolic, we do observe when disturbances (from ecological, as in fauna and flora, to economical, as in fewer yield from agricultural activities) on a region inevitably leads to consequences for other regions, no matter the apparent geographic distance, no matter the borders. In fact, Mother Nature does not care about our social construct “borders/frontiers”, and the El Niño, supercharged by the anthropogenic climate change, is a chilling demonstration of this.
!worldnews@lemmy.ml
Actually, it’s very valid and certainly not a mistake to ask questions. Especially not about events of global significance.
I’m not saying it isn’t valid asking about the consequences for one’s own inhabiting geographic region. It’s quite expected as we experience the physical objective reality from inside each one of our subjective perspectives. And, to a certain extent, knowing about the consequences expected for one’s own country (e.g. Germany) even helps building climate awareness (i.e. so we get to be aware of how it’s not something distant from where we’re currently breathing and how it’s gonna affect each one of us).
What I’m trying to say, however, is that we shouldn’t ignore the fact that this is far from a localized matter.
It’s a global matter.
Mother Nature doesn’t even remotely take our political borders into Her considerations. She doesn’t care about how we had split the surface of Planet Earth into 2x2 hemispheres, 24 “time zones” and hundreds of so-called “countries” and “economic blocs”. Birds migrate and fly across hemispheres regardless of our migratory and passport/visa bureaucracies, viruses and pathogens will reach places as remote as Kiribati (see COVID-19 and H1N1, for example; needless to say, climate change leads to increased likelihood of pandemic events)…
When I hear about the typhoons striking China, or the simultaneous drought-flood that happened in Africa, or the heat wave striking Europe, I’m aware of how is connected with mechanisms (including, but not limited to, a supercharged ENSO) that will also affect the state of Minas Gerais where I’m currently sat down to write this reply, no matter how these places are dozens of thousands of kilometers away from me, and I’m aware how those phenomena will take place geographically closer to me as well, and how indeed it already happened when towns within “Interior paulista” (regions within the Brazilian state of São Paulo) recently got practically destroyed by a storm.
See, Earth is this hermetically-enclosed cosmic Petri dish wandering through the void veil of Laniakea Supercluster as She (Earth) revolves around a G2-type star. All the fauna (including this species self-labeled “Homo sapiens”) and flora living inside it have no means of resorting to other Petri dish (despite the fever dream of “colonizing Mars” from a specific wannabe-god Homo sapiens individual) if it’s rendered unable to sustain life due to a broken ecosystem, and a broken ecosystem isn’t limited to Germany or other European countries, or USA, or Canada, or China, or India, or Kenya, or Moçambique, or Brazil, or Kiribati… a broken ecosystem means a broken ecosystem everywhere. This is a fact, a fact we must consider as we get faced by more frequent and harsher ecological catastrophes leading to ever-higher death tolls; hence my earlier reply about this interconnectedness and the need to try and not miss the forest for the trees.
It’s worth mentioning, this community is “World news” and even the linked article, despite being focused on the Northern Hemisphere, mentions how it’s an ongoing phenomenon with worldwide reaches (e.g. “This circulation change affects the global atmosphere”). The emphasis on the global aspects of those phenomena is, thus, a must.
!worldnews@lemmy.ml
In answer to your questions:
It means total societal collapse by 2050 due to parts of the planet becoming unsurvivable and global crop failures.
No, that’s climate change.
True.
From what I’ve heard it’s not really important