Could This Super El Niño Trigger a Global Food Crisis?

The El Niño of 1877 and 1878 was one of the strongest on record. This event was a key driver of concurrent, multiyear droughts in Asia, Brazil, and Africa that caused widespread crop failures and catalyzed a global famine, killing millions. Now, El Niño is back again, and it’s rapidly strengthening. It’s still early days, but climate scientists are already comparing this event to the 1877-1878 El Niño. If it becomes as severe as forecast models suggest, we can expect an intense increase in Pacific sea surface temperatures that will push the global average temperature to new heights and shift weather patterns across the globe. But could this cause another global famine? For this Giz Asks, we posed this question to several experts. While they highlighted certain risks, they emphasized that even exceptionally strong El Niño events cannot trigger a severe food shortage in isolation—social, political, and economic factors must also play a role. Professor of international relations and international development at the University of Sussex. Selwyn teaches about global supply chains, food systems, and development. El Niño is a cyclical climatic event—periodic warming of the Pacific—that di