‘Prepare for Super El Niño’
Britain’s national weather agency predicted that Super El Niño could make 2027 the hottest year globally.
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Britain’s national weather agency predicted that Super El Niño could make 2027 the hottest year globally.
A disaster risk expert warned authorities of the serious threat of the looming Super El Niño at a recent forum about the national security implications of climate change.
“Groups like the Office of Civil Defense, DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development), they really need to prepare for very serious disasters. But it also means they need to work on resilience,” Chad Michael Briggs told DAILY TRIBUNE on the sideline of the strategic consulting group Stratbase Research Institute’s forum titled “Towards a Peaceful and Sustainable Future: Addressing the Climate-Conflict Nexus in ASEAN” in Makati City last 24 August.
Briggs is a professor and academic program director for Executive Master in Disaster Risk and Crisis Management of the Asian Institute of Management. He spoke on “Strengthening Climate-Security Impact Assessments Through Expert and Local Knowledge” at the forum.
El Niño occurs when sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific become unusually warm, disrupting global wind, atmospheric-pressure and rainfall patterns. The powerful Super El Niño, according to Briggs, has never happened before “that it’s really difficult to plan for” it.
“We won’t know what will happen in terms of drought or in terms of storms,” he said.
Briggs said he sees so many extremes in terms of events, in terms of drought, during the Super El Niño, that he expects food insecurity or food crisis in the Philippines, especially when combined with what’s happening in the Middle East, referring to increased fertilizer and fuel prices.
“If farmers don’t own their land, that contributes to the food security crisis,” he added.
Britain’s national weather agency predicted that Super El Niño could make 2027 the hottest year globally, Agence France-Presse reports.
Adam Scaife, head of long-range forecasting at the Met Office, told the BBC that Pacific water would heat up more than 3 degrees Celsius above the norm in the coming months, which “is unheard of in modern climate records.”
Temperatures in the Pacific region are currently running about 2.6C above a rolling 30-year average, according to the Climate Brink dashboard based on data from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The dashboard also aggregates forecasts that put El Niño on course to peak at a 3.9C anomaly this November — well above a 3C anomaly detected in 2015.
Another speaker at the forum, Angelo Kairos dela Cruz, executive director of the non-profit, non-stock organization Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, said that climate change is already increasing temperature, precipitation, wind and sea level.
Dela Cruz forecasted that the average maximum wind speed of typhoons and super typhoons in the Philippines will rise by 29 percent within the 2030 decade and 33 percent within the 2050 decade.
“Filipinos could experience more than one tropical cyclone occurrence with maximum winds exceeding 118 kilometers per hour, leading to estimated infrastructure damages of about P83 billion and P78 billion in 2030 and 2050, respectively.
For sea level, it may rise by 35 percent within the next decade, permanently displacing about 150,000 Filipinos and causing P18 billion in economic losses by 2040.
“The rise in sea levels will also affect natural systems, resulting in impacts like mangrove degradation, coral reef bleaching and saltwater intrusion,” according to Dela Cruz.
Meanwhile, Special Envoy for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga told forum participants that the Philippines, as ASEAN chair, had a “unique opportunity” to lead the region toward recognizing climate change as part of its security architecture.
She also informed that the country had already incorporated climate security into its national development and security frameworks, with the National Security Strategy 2023-2028 identifying climate change as a threat multiplier and security concern.
Environment Secretary Juan Miguel Cuna, via video link, stressed that the Philippines needed access to climate finance, appropriate technology, science and data, as well as partnerships aimed at strengthening institutions and communities over the long term.
German Ambassador to the Philippines Andreas Pfaffernoschke, co-organizer of the forum, urged ASEAN to strengthen regional early warning systems that combine climate science with conflict-sensitive analysis as well as climate adaptation projects to be designed with conflict prevention in mind and for vulnerable communities — including farmers, fishers, indigenous peoples, women and young people — to have a greater role in policymaking.
Stratbase president Victor Andres Manhit called for greater participation from the private sector, civil society and academe in advancing renewable energy, resilient infrastructure, climate-smart production and nature-positive investments.
