Speaker 1: More extreme weather could be on the way.
Speaker 2: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is issued in Alnino watch.
Speaker 1: Jez El Nino has become very popular again after forecasters
Speaker 1: with Noah declared its arrival in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 3: Some people are now.
Speaker 1: Asking if California is in for another wet winter.
Speaker 2: Almost two weeks into the Atlantic hurricane season and ten
Speaker 2: days since we had the first name storm Arlene, and
Speaker 2: it's official Noah's declaring al Nino is here, yeh.
Speaker 3: If you've been thinking the weather and the effects of
Speaker 3: climate change have been extra volatile lately, droughts, wildfires, you
Speaker 3: name it, well, race yourself, because the arrival of the
Speaker 3: first al Nino in almost four years is expected to
Speaker 3: cause new kinds of upheaval across the globe.
Speaker 1: If we looked at North America, for instance, what you
Speaker 1: would see next winter in the al Nino is you
Speaker 1: would see a wetter, stormier part of the southern United States,
Speaker 1: for instance, and a drier southern tier of Canada.
Speaker 2: Scientists suggesting El Nino causes trillions of dollars in lost
Speaker 2: economic growth could be more expensive cup of coffee, or
Speaker 2: you might be thinking twice about that block of chocolate
Speaker 2: the next time you're in the super market isle.
Speaker 3: I'm West Kasova today on the Big Tag Bloomberg's Brian
Speaker 3: Sullivan and Ben Sharples on what al Nino has in
Speaker 3: store for us. Brian, for the past three years, we've
Speaker 3: been experiencing this global weather pattern known as Lanina. Now
Speaker 3: that's ended and we're about to enter into El Nino again.
Speaker 3: Can you explain to us what an al nino is
Speaker 3: and how it's different from a lanina.
Speaker 1: So al nino is when the surface of the the
Speaker 1: equatorial surface of the Pacific Ocean warms and the atmosphere
Speaker 1: above it reacts to it. And then lannina is when
Speaker 1: most of that area is cooler, and there's also a
Speaker 1: reaction to it. But because of the fact that you
Speaker 1: have warm and cold, you have different reactions in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And it's that reaction in the atmosphere that actually changes
Speaker 1: the weather systems around the world.
Speaker 3: And why does that happen.
Speaker 1: Part of it is just simply because the Pacific Ocean
Speaker 1: is so big, as one US government expert told me,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just an accident of geography. The equator
Speaker 1: rotates slower than the rest of the globe. Right, if
Speaker 1: you're at the north pole, then you're spinning around much faster,
Speaker 1: and if you're at the equator, it moves slower. And
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean is just so huge that there's enough
Speaker 1: time for those anomalies the warm or cool water to
Speaker 1: pile up in that area and then change the atmosphere
Speaker 1: above it.
Speaker 3: Brian, can you just generally explain what's the weather like
Speaker 3: when you're in an al nino and what's it like
Speaker 3: when you're in a lanninia.
Speaker 1: If we looked at North America, for instance, what you
Speaker 1: would see next winter in the alninia is you would
Speaker 1: see a wetter, stormier part of the southern United States,
Speaker 1: for instance, and a drier southern tier of Canada. That
Speaker 1: would be one example. You would also see drier conditions
Speaker 1: across Brazil where they grow a lot of the coffee.
Speaker 1: You would see drier conditions across Southeast Asia as well
Speaker 1: as South Africa. In La Nina, you kind of get
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. So in La Nina, the southern
Speaker 1: United States, for instance, will be dry. The Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: and southern Canada will be wet. There'll be drought in
Speaker 1: southern Brazil and Argentina, which has been really plaguing corn
Speaker 1: and soybean crops there for years actually, and then you
Speaker 1: would probably get some wetter conditions in Brazil. So basically
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is shifting of drought and flood back
Speaker 1: and forth. It's just swinging of the pendulum. So if
Speaker 1: you're in drought during in El Nino, the pendulum would
Speaker 1: shift and you would be in flood during La Nina
Speaker 1: or vice versa.
Speaker 3: So even though we some times think of Lianninia as
Speaker 3: the kinder of the two because it's cooler, the weather
Speaker 3: patterns themselves are still really extreme and potentially harmful.
Speaker 1: They can be completely destructive. If you look at the
Speaker 1: drought in California that has gone on for three years
Speaker 1: that was driven largely by Vannina.
Speaker 3: And yet Ben in your story, you rate kind of
Speaker 3: the world is bracing for this new El Nina. Way
Speaker 3: is it considered to be so much more potentially harmful
Speaker 3: than the Li Nina we've all been living through.
Speaker 2: El Nina tends to add more inflationary pressure due to
Speaker 2: to high commodity prices, and higher commodity prices are typically
Speaker 2: due to those droughts and flooding that Brian has touched on.
Speaker 2: There's a wide range of crops that can be impacted.
Speaker 2: We're talking from wheat, corn, rice, coffee, cocoa in West Africa,
Speaker 2: and if they're significant damages to those, you know, it
Speaker 2: could be more expensive cup of coffee, or you might
Speaker 2: be thinking twice about that block of chocolate the next
Speaker 2: time you're in the supermarket. All but when you look
Speaker 2: at where we've come also, we've seen the world is recovering,
Speaker 2: it's trying to regain its footing from the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 2: In a monthst that, you have the Russian invasion of
Speaker 2: Ukraine and that specifically hit commodities like oil, wheat, corn
Speaker 2: and that sort of stuff. So it's heaping that inflationary
Speaker 2: pressure on top of events that have already come. So
Speaker 2: we're in already in an environment where we're experiencing above
Speaker 2: target inflation in many countries. So el Nina just adds
Speaker 2: that a little bit extra. When countries and economies are
Speaker 2: trying to regain their.
Speaker 3: Footing, Brian, how do they know when an al Ninia
Speaker 3: year is coming or when a lie ninia? What is
Speaker 3: the cycle?
Speaker 1: There is an array of booies that stretch from South
Speaker 1: America all the way across the Pacific Ocean into Indonesia,
Speaker 1: and those are constantly measuring the temperature of the water
Speaker 1: as well as the atmosphere conditions above it. They use
Speaker 1: satellites as well, they have boats that go out there
Speaker 1: and take a look at things. So basically, if they
Speaker 1: start to see a trend in the temperature of the water,
Speaker 1: they start to look for signs in the atmosphere that
Speaker 1: the al Nino or the La Nina cycle may be starting.
Speaker 1: And that's the directions of the winds, for instance, across
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean. So if the winds are blowing from
Speaker 1: South America towards Asia, then you're going to get La Nina,
Speaker 1: because that's going to pull the cold water up from
Speaker 1: the depths of the Pacific Ocean and spread it out
Speaker 1: across the equator. And likewise, when al Nino happens, those
Speaker 1: winds get weaker and that allows the sun to just
Speaker 1: bake those waters and the equatorial Pacific and then just
Speaker 1: get hotter and harder and hotter. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different signs out there that people are watching constantly.
Speaker 2: If you really want to know if El Nino has hit.
Speaker 2: Just look to the waters off Peru and the anchovy's there. Historically,
Speaker 2: it was a dead giveaway when El Nino was rolling
Speaker 2: in because the anchovy catch was less than what it
Speaker 2: would be in previous years. It's because the anchovies go
Speaker 2: they dive deeper into the cooler waters. They don't like
Speaker 2: the hot waters, and it makes it harder for them
Speaker 2: to the catch. And that became initially as part of
Speaker 2: one of the indicators as to this whole phenomenon that
Speaker 2: we know El Nino.
Speaker 1: So al Nino got its name because this migration of
Speaker 1: the anchovies happened around Christmas time. The fishermen in this
Speaker 1: area noticed that it was happening at Christmas time, so
Speaker 1: they referred to it as al Nino or the little boy.
Speaker 1: The christ child was born on Christmas, and that's where
Speaker 1: it came from. So the opposite, of course is a girl.
Speaker 1: If you have a boy, you have to have a girl.
Speaker 1: And la Nina.
Speaker 3: And how is climate change impacted El Nino or the
Speaker 3: strength of it. How often this cycle occurs.
Speaker 1: So originally, years ago, decades ago, they thought that El
Speaker 1: Nino's would become more common under the climate change regime.
Speaker 1: Under the global warming, because you know, warm ocean, you
Speaker 1: would have more al Nina's. But what they found in
Speaker 1: the last twenty years that there's actually more n Ninia's,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of academic research going on right
Speaker 1: now is to try to figure out why that's happening.
Speaker 1: There's a number of interesting things though. If you took
Speaker 1: the water temperature that would demonstrate on Lannina now, that
Speaker 1: would would demonstrate the cool part of the Pacific Ocean now,
Speaker 1: and you went back in time fifty years or sixty years,
Speaker 1: that water would be warm enough to trigger an El
Speaker 1: Nino back in those days. So what you're seeing with
Speaker 1: that example is that the oceans are actually getting warmer
Speaker 1: and warmer and warmer. But al nino and La Nina
Speaker 1: itself doesn't depend on the actual warmth of the water.
Speaker 1: What it depends on is how different the water is
Speaker 1: to each other. So if you get an area that's
Speaker 1: relatively warm in the Pacific Ocean, but it's cooler than
Speaker 1: the water on either side of it, then you will
Speaker 1: get a La Nina. Likewise, if you get a part
Speaker 1: of the Pacific Ocean that's actually quite a bit warmer
Speaker 1: than the water on either side of it, you get
Speaker 1: that al Nino because you need that differential in the
Speaker 1: temperature to really dart the engine and get the things going.
Speaker 3: Then you mentioned earlier about how these forceful weather patterns
Speaker 3: can affect the price of food, the ability to grow crops.
Speaker 3: How have previous al Nino's affected the food supply?
Speaker 2: Crops are vulnerable to the weather. All it takes is
Speaker 2: a little bit of change, a little less rain, and
Speaker 2: you've got a little less Let's say, for example, wheat.
Speaker 2: One of the examples is Australia recently reduced its forecast
Speaker 2: for the nation's wheat harvest and they are predicting that
Speaker 2: is primarily due to lower rainfall due to El Nino,
Speaker 2: So that'll be a lower wheat crop this year, and
Speaker 2: that feeds into the global narrative of supply for wheat.
Speaker 2: For example, there are healthy supplies within sort of the
Speaker 2: European basket, but you get sort of dense in supply.
Speaker 2: El Nino is a reason we spoke about Russia before.
Speaker 2: That was a reason. And incrementally, if you take supply
Speaker 2: out of system, prices rise and that feeds through into inflation.
Speaker 2: It leads feeds into GDP growth from anywhere from Brazil
Speaker 2: to Australia to India, and it has a huge effect.
Speaker 2: I mean, people are repaying a lot of money for
Speaker 2: staples in many areas of the world at the moment.
Speaker 3: Brian. One thing you write also in this story is
Speaker 3: that this spike in heat leads to a huge surge
Speaker 3: in demand for electricity to cool homes and other things.
Speaker 3: How do they anticipate this El Nino is going to
Speaker 3: affect just the power grid and energy.
Speaker 1: Over the past few years. You've had trouble in California
Speaker 1: and particularly in Texas when this spike and heat comes
Speaker 1: along because it puts taxes to grid. Many of these
Speaker 1: places have a larger percentage of renewable energy online now
Speaker 1: than they had before. So when you get a really
Speaker 1: hot day, when you anticipate that the megawattach is going
Speaker 1: way up, you're going to have to start shifting electricity
Speaker 1: around the grid to make up for that. Now, if
Speaker 1: you have one of these massive heat waves, which you've
Speaker 1: seen for the past few summers in a row, you
Speaker 1: can't really start grabbing electricity from somewhere else because everyone
Speaker 1: is hot. The only way to deal with that in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases is to actually ask people to
Speaker 1: go offline, or you have rolling blackouts, which has happened before,
Speaker 1: or in the extreme cases, the Communist government of China
Speaker 1: actually told people to shut down using electricity and they
Speaker 1: closed factories. So there's a lot of stress on the
Speaker 1: system worldwide when these things happen. And especially if you
Speaker 1: get combination of these stuck weather patterns, these big high
Speaker 1: pressure systems that just sit over an area and they
Speaker 1: bake and bake and bake the place, you're going to
Speaker 1: see a lot more stress on the grid conditions.
Speaker 2: The US is just called an El Nina's we're just
Speaker 2: on the cusp of El Ninyu. And yet across Asia
Speaker 2: we've seen it's hot. It's stifling hot. Countries from Thailand
Speaker 2: to Bangladesh to India have already broaken temperature records. We've
Speaker 2: seen in China the heat is could turning hydropower, so
Speaker 2: that's affecting aluminum output in China. In parts of Vietnam,
Speaker 2: they've also gone into rolling blackouts. And this is already
Speaker 2: this is pre El Nino, and you know El Nino, China, Bangladesh,
Speaker 2: this is the factory of the world. Canon, Apple, Samsung
Speaker 2: all produce various bits and pieces in these areas, and
Speaker 2: they're already facing conditions where there's blackouts in Vietnam, a
Speaker 2: key area for a key manufacturing areas up in the north.
Speaker 2: There are already stresses in the system already, and we
Speaker 2: haven't seen the worst of El Nino yet.
Speaker 3: After the break, Al Nino could stir up a big
Speaker 3: storm for the global economy. Then you mentioned earlier about
Speaker 3: how El Nino can cause a spike in inflation. How
Speaker 3: else does it affect economies? What does it do to
Speaker 3: say gross domestic product are just the general output of
Speaker 3: a country.
Speaker 2: There's been some recent modeling done from Dartmouth scientists suggesting
Speaker 2: El Nino causes trillions of dollars in lost economic growth.
Speaker 2: They've done some modeling on some the bigger El Nino
Speaker 2: events previously in nineteen ninety seven, ninety eight, that was
Speaker 2: a bigger on Inuo event, and they found that it
Speaker 2: set world GDP back by five point seven trillion dollars.
Speaker 2: The age two eighty three El Nina reduced growth by
Speaker 2: four point one trillion, So it's big. It hurts GDP.
Speaker 2: So you know there you will get the immediate inflationary
Speaker 2: pressure from the high commodity prices that have been damaged
Speaker 2: due to drought to dry conditions, less rainfall, but the
Speaker 2: flow in effect and the hit to GDP is even
Speaker 2: larger than what the immediate effect is.
Speaker 3: So we talked a bit about how El Nino will
Speaker 3: affect energy supplies, in particular electricity. We're starting to see
Speaker 3: Apple and Tesla, which depend on huge amounts of electricity,
Speaker 3: the whole tech sector looking at possible sure, which is
Speaker 3: how are other businesses responding to these potential disruptions caused
Speaker 3: by El Nino.
Speaker 2: Sadly, you know, the winner is fossil fuels. A lot
Speaker 2: of the time, especially in parts of Asia, in hot
Speaker 2: periods in parts of Europe as well, a lot of
Speaker 2: people or a lot of companies have relied on diesel
Speaker 2: generators to make up that power short is, to ensure
Speaker 2: that manufacturing or their production isn't affected by rolling blackouts.
Speaker 2: So again it becomes a world reliant on fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: Diesel generators plug that gap when we start to find
Speaker 2: ourselves losing power due to blackouts.
Speaker 3: Brain we're all seeing these wildfires in Canada. We've seen
Speaker 3: wildfires in recent years spread across the globe. Is there
Speaker 3: a relationship between La Nina, between al Nino and these
Speaker 3: kinds of really big increasing fires and droughts and other
Speaker 3: climate events.
Speaker 1: There definitely are. If you look at the large wildfires,
Speaker 1: for instance, that raked across Australia a few years ago,
Speaker 1: those are directly tried to a drought caused by al Nina.
Speaker 1: If you looked at some of the large wildfires that
Speaker 1: went across the western United States in the last few years,
Speaker 1: those were tied to droughts caused by Li Nina. And
Speaker 1: the fires in Canada, for instance, while not really caused
Speaker 1: by al Nino and Linina, will probably be made worse
Speaker 1: next year because al Nino brings drought to southern Canada.
Speaker 1: You have these parched forests already, they're going to get
Speaker 1: even more dry, and next summer you have lightning strikes,
Speaker 1: you'll have more fires, and it'll just get progressively worse.
Speaker 1: I think the one way to think about the relationship
Speaker 1: between climate and weather is that climate sets the table
Speaker 1: and weather delivers the meal. We get. The extremes coming
Speaker 1: from weather events such as hurricanes or typhoons or heat
Speaker 1: waves or floods or droughts or whatever, they're all made
Speaker 1: worse as the climate gets warmer and warmer and warmer.
Speaker 2: I was talking to a climate scientist about the recent
Speaker 2: heat wave in Asia in April, and he mentioned that
Speaker 2: a heat wave of that severity is typical of what
Speaker 2: we see toward the end of an el Nina, and
Speaker 2: this is happening pre on Nina. So that just gives
Speaker 2: you an understanding of what climate is doing to temperatures
Speaker 2: even without the effects of an al Ninu event.
Speaker 3: Brain one thing that happens when we head into the
Speaker 3: summer is the hurricane season starts, and we've seen some
Speaker 3: pretty devastating storms in recent years. How might El Nina
Speaker 3: affect that?
Speaker 1: Almina might actually help the Atlantic hurricane season, simply because
Speaker 1: the changes in the atmosphere bring wind sheer across the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, which
Speaker 1: will tear apart budding tropical storms and hurricanes that are
Speaker 1: moving into that area. And as you know, I mean
Speaker 1: a storm, a hurricane, or a tropical dorm and the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico can really disrupt energy prices in the
Speaker 1: United States, it can disrupt supplies, it can disrupt production.
Speaker 1: The place where it doesn't help, however, is in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: You've often seen more typhoons in the Pacific Ocean. You
Speaker 1: see them curving up towards Japan more often, so Japan
Speaker 1: may actually be under the gun for some really strong
Speaker 1: typhoons at the end of the summer.
Speaker 3: When we come back to the human cost of Al Nina,
Speaker 3: then one thing we haven't talked about is how it
Speaker 3: just affects people and people's health.
Speaker 2: A big feature of El Nino is is drought, and
Speaker 2: we've seen drought, particularly across Africa, kill a lot of people.
Speaker 2: There was in twenty fifteen sixteen high malnutrition rates, force displacement.
Speaker 2: You had nearly two dozen nations issuing humanitarian appeals of
Speaker 2: more than five billion dollars route and famine, and typically
Speaker 2: in countries that aren't really well equipped to deal with
Speaker 2: these sort of health issues. You know, usually it's poorer
Speaker 2: nations that the feel the bigger brunt of it. We
Speaker 2: touched on it earlier, but you know, the haze and
Speaker 2: the smog from plantations that fires, especially across Indonesia and Malaysia,
Speaker 2: has in the past drifered across the Philippines and across Singapore,
Speaker 2: and more recently twenty nineteen twenty twenty wh hared the
Speaker 2: bushfires in eastern Australia. Now, while that was considered globally
Speaker 2: a week El Nino year, conditions were set for a
Speaker 2: huge bushfire season. We've seen respiratory problems in kids, newborns
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So public health is also a
Speaker 2: big impact, not only the loss of crops and commodities,
Speaker 2: but public health is a key aspect or a key
Speaker 2: feature of El Nino.
Speaker 3: And then, since this happens cyclically, is there anything that
Speaker 3: governments do to kind of prepare for it so that
Speaker 3: there aren't commodity praise sharks and everybody is suddenly scrambling.
Speaker 2: I mean, governments can stockpile, they can put themselves in
Speaker 2: a position where they adequately have adequate stocks, but I
Speaker 2: mean that can only go so far the world. The
Speaker 2: globe will get stretched very very quickly when commodities are
Speaker 2: especially hit across all across the world and you have
Speaker 2: various events, the caveat there being. It all depends on
Speaker 2: the severity of the Old Nino. But we are already
Speaker 2: seeing countries like Australia reducing that they're there forecast harvest
Speaker 2: for wheat. We've also got Thailand they usually plant two
Speaker 2: types of rice crop. They're only planting one this time around,
Speaker 2: so they put preparations in place as best they can,
Speaker 2: but there's only so much you can do depending on
Speaker 2: the well brain.
Speaker 3: You mentioned at least one good possible thing that could
Speaker 3: come of El Nino, which could possibly break up hurricanes
Speaker 3: in the Atlantic. Are there any other possible benefits, like
Speaker 3: a reason why maybe we should welcome an al Nino
Speaker 3: instead of just being kind of terrified about it.
Speaker 1: California has suffered under drug for the last few years.
Speaker 1: It was actually reversed a little bit this winter. But
Speaker 1: Annel Nino, for instance, would actually help California stay out
Speaker 1: of drought for the coming year. And there are other
Speaker 1: areas such as the crop growing areas of Argentina and Brazil.
Speaker 1: Southern Brazil, they were in drought which was driving up
Speaker 1: corn prices, which was driving up souybean prices. Well, they
Speaker 1: should get more water this year, they should be fine,
Speaker 1: the crop should be fine, yields should go up. So
Speaker 1: there are benefits to this in various parts of the world.
Speaker 3: And how long should we expect this cycle to last
Speaker 3: until once again it flip flops and we're back with
Speaker 3: La Nina.
Speaker 1: Usually they start breaking up sometime around March April May.
Speaker 1: You'll see them. They'll peak between December January February, and
Speaker 1: then they'll start to break up in March April May.
Speaker 1: The ocean will return to a neutral state and then
Speaker 1: the cycle may start again. Usually you don't get too
Speaker 1: El Nino's in a row. It's more common to get
Speaker 1: two La Nina's in a row. In recent years we
Speaker 1: actually had three Lindon News in a row. So there's
Speaker 1: a good example of that.
Speaker 3: Brian Ben, thanks so much for coming on the show,
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Thanks for listening to us here
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