The 1997-98 and 2015-16 El Niño events, for instance, brought catastrophic flooding to the eastern Pacific while plunging Africa, Australia and southeast Asia into severe droughts.
These disruptions don’t just alter weather, but devastate crops, collapse fisheries, bleach coral reefs, fuel wildfires, and threaten human health. The 1997-98 El Niño alone caused an estimated US$5.7 trillion (£4.4 trillion) in global income losses.
Now, something more alarming is unfolding: both El Niño and La Niña are lingering longer than ever before, which is amplifying their destructive potential.
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This article is published in full at The Conversation by Zhengyao Lu, researcher at the Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science and MERGE-member: Consecutive El Niños are happening more often and the result is more devastating – new research
The relevant Nature Geoscience study was also published open-access: Increased frequency of multi-year El Niño–Southern Oscillation events across the Holocene | Nature Geoscience
