Severe El Niño could cause 450,000 heat-related deaths worldwide
A Climate Impact Lab assessment says severe El Niño could result in 450,000 deaths from extreme heat in the next six months, and the cumulative toll may keep rising until mid-2027.
- A new report projects that the current severe El Niño could cause up to 450,000 deaths from extreme heat worldwide over the next six months.
- Scientists have described this El Niño as a "Godzilla" level event, with the potential to break the highest temperature records ever recorded.
- The extreme heat is considered a preview of the climate 20 years from now, when such temperatures could become the norm.
- Experts are urging governments to implement emergency strategies, including early-warning systems and cooling shelters, to mitigate the public health disaster.
A new report from the Climate Impact Lab, produced in collaboration with the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley, presents an alarming assessment that the severe El Niño now affecting the world could cause up to 450,000 deaths from extreme heat over the next six months, with the cumulative toll expected to continue rising until mid-2027.
Climate scientists have described this El Niño as being at “Godzilla” level because it could break the highest temperature records ever recorded.
Its effects are expected across all major regions of the world, from Southeast Asia and Africa’s Sahel region to Nigeria, Sudan, India, Brazil and the United States, with deaths from heat-related illnesses, droughts, wildfires and flash floods expected to rise substantially.
Prof Michael Greenstone, co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab, said the projected figure of 451,000 deaths was not merely a statistic, but represented families, workers and members of the public who could lose their lives to extreme weather.
He warned that this El Niño was like “a reflection of the future 20 years from now”, when unusually high temperatures would become normal around the world.
He said government agencies worldwide therefore needed to urgently mobilise emergency strategies, including developing early-warning models, expanding cooling shelters, providing medical personnel and introducing measures to protect outdoor workers so they could respond quickly to the public-health disaster.
Beyond the direct risk to human life, the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that this severe El Niño could disrupt global food supply chains and agricultural production, potentially leaving around 50 million people facing hunger and food-price inflation.
Extremely high sea-surface temperatures, together with the burning of fossil fuels by humans, have injected enormous amounts of energy into the global climate system, worryingly weakening communities’ capacity to cope at every level.
