Floods can hide coming El Niño risk
While Filipinos are dreading the floods, our Asian peers have been discussing El Niño more intensely over the past week.
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While Filipinos are dreading the floods, our Asian peers have been discussing El Niño more intensely over the past week.
After two to three weeks of rain and consistent flooding, El Niño may seem like the farthest concern for Filipinos in Luzon. How can a dry spell be looming when more than 200 millimeters of rain, equivalent to 44 percent of the rainfall during typhoon “Ondoy,” was dumped on Metro Manila over a five-hour window just two weeks ago? That contrast is precisely the risk: the floods can make the country underestimate an El Niño event that is already forming and could soon threaten food supply, water security and inflation.
While Filipinos are dreading the floods, our Asian peers have been discussing El Niño more intensely over the past week. The recent floods may be distracting us from or masking the emerging danger of El Niño. Just a cursory survey of news reports on the topic would reveal only a limited amount of coverage of El Niño in local media over the past 28 days.
The issue deserves attention for three reasons: local coverage has been limited, current climate indicators already point to El Niño conditions, and past episodes show that Philippine agriculture and consumer prices can be affected before households fully feel the shift in weather.
Make no mistake, El Niño is already here. Based on the August update of the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released last week, El Niño is already here. The main metric for El Niño is the Relative Oceanic Nino Index, and it has already indicated El Niño clearly in the April-May-June and May-June-July quarters.
While August is a very wet month, it should not fool us into believing that the next few months are going to be still moist and cold. Based on the report, El Niño probabilities will remain at 100 percent up to the first quarter of 2027 before decreasing. More importantly, the outlook painted by the report places the probability that the El Niño severity would be very strong during the September-October-November quarter at 90 percent. For the succeeding October-November-December quarter window, the chances of El Niño reaching a historical severity is estimated at 69 percent.We can take some comfort in the lower probability that 2026-2027 El Niño would be most severe in history. However, given the very strong rating is still highly probable, we should still be concerned that the tough times for agricultural production in 2015-2016 are on the table.
Despite the recent rains and floods, we need to recalibrate our expectations. The habagat affected only portions of Luzon, while the rest of the country did not experience the same heavy precipitation. If science is pointing to warmer and drier conditions toward the fourth quarter of 2026, agencies, agricultural producers, firms, consumers, and consumer companies should begin El Niño preparations now if they have not done so yet.
Having attended a few briefings on El Niño with resource persons from ASEAN, what is clear is that the playbook for El Niño is not set in stone. While it may be very strong or severe, El Niño can have different effects depending on location, timing, duration, and how we respond. What is clear from the macroeconomic data is that Philippine crops such as rice, corn, sugar, coffee and rubber are affected during these dry spells. And while they are not as affected as agricultural crops, livestock and poultry are also affected by the increase in temperature, which can be negative on yields of milk and eggs. Impounding water, improving irrigation, investing in cooling equipment and shade for livestock are some adaptation or solutions that can manage the higher heat.
El Niño does not affect only agriculture. Drier weather can also affect energy, specifically energy derived from hydro power plants and technologies that rely on steam. A shortage of water can reduce generating capacity and have an adverse effect on the regional electricity service. Together with the impact on agriculture, El Niño’s ability to slacken electricity generation can add significant drag on the macroeconomy.
The positive thing about El Niño is that it is not a sudden weather phenomenon like a tornado. Science can now provide lead time before its worst effects arrive. Given the reported links between El Niño and climate change, the country needs mitigation and adaptation strategies that combine national planning with regional and local information. Even when heavy rains cloud our view of what lies ahead, data and scientific methods give us an advantage: if El Niño will make conditions warmer than usual, we can still plan and work toward keeping our cool.
