What do we know about the impacts of the next El Niño on agrifood systems?

By Jawoo Koo and Weston Anderson

Food, land, and water systems face daunting challenges in the future, and the body of research exploring these challenges is growing rapidly. This note is part of a series developed by the CGIAR Foresight Initiative to summarize what we know today about the future of various aspects of food systems. The goal of these notes is to serve as a quick reference, point to further information, and help guide future research and decisions. This note was prepared in close collaboration with the CGIAR Initiative on Digital Innovation. 

Key messages

• As of June 2023, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared that El Niño conditions are present and there is a consensus among climate prediction centers that El Niño will likely persist through the boreal winter season (November 2023 – February 2024), ending the recent three-year La Niña.
• El Niño is typically associated with seasonal climate anomalies and extreme weather events throughout the developing world, especially across sub-Saharan Africa, but the economic impacts caused by these events are difficult to disentangle from those of other climate shocks, natural disasters, and economic cycles.
• The strength and consistency of El Niño’s agro-climate impacts vary by region. For example, El Niño consistently brings drought and poor maize yields to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Southern Mozambique, while impacts further north in Malawi, Zambia, and Northern Mozambique are possible but less consistent.
• El Niño’s unique slow onset, periodic pattern, and lead-times of prediction (from a few months to a year) make it possible to design anticipatory policies and prepare emergency responses a few months in advance.
• Recognizing both the strengths and the uncertainties in El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecasts, policymakers should closely monitor the evolution of ENSO phases, potential impacts of El Niño and be prepared to coordinate policy responses in an agile way as the situation unfolds.
• Regardless of ENSO, actions to foster climate-resilient agrifood systems should be broadly prioritized as global warming continues and climate extremes occur more frequently, including climate information services, climate-smart agricultural practices, access to finance, and social safety nets.

Recent trends and challenges

As of June 2023, there is a consensus among the climate science community and prediction centers that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) of the upcoming boreal winter season (November 2023 – February 2024) will transition to an El Niño event, ending the recent three-year La Niña ¹. El Niño naturally re-occurs every 2 to 7 years, and its cycle typically lasts 9 to 12 months, starting with a slow onset during the boreal (Northern Hemisphere) spring season (March-June), peak intensity during the late fall or winter (November-February), followed by weakening during the spring or early summer (March-June). Its unique slow onset, periodic pattern, and lead-times of prediction (from a few months to a year) make it possible to design anticipatory policies and prepare emergency responses a few months in advance.

Evidence shows El Niño is associated with seasonal climate anomalies and a higher occurrence of extreme weather events throughout the developing world, especially across sub-Saharan Africa, but the economic impacts caused by these events are difficult to disentangle from those of other climate shocks, natural disasters, and economic cycles.

Although there is an expanding literature on how natural disasters are managed in the global South, quantitative evaluation of the policies and investments that could help avoid at least some of the damage caused by El Niño events is limited. Further, there are still many technical and scientific challenges to predicting ENSO with the desired level of confidence due to the complexity of the oceanic and atmospheric processes involved. For example, ENSO forecasts are notoriously difficult to make during the months of February, March, and April – a time often referred to as the “spring predictability barrier” – but become progressively more skillful over the course of May, June, and July for lead times up to the next boreal spring ². These factors complicate the design of policies and timely response mechanisms that could help mitigate economic damage and welfare losses. Thus, it is important for countries to closely monitor the development of El Niño/La Niña events and be prepared to adjust the risk management measures in an agile way.

The strength and consistency of El Niño’s agro-climate impacts vary by region. Even in the event that an El Niño develops, the expected impacts are robust and consistent in some regions but remain difficult to predict in others. This is partly due to the complexity of the El Niño phenomenon and its interaction with other modes of climate variability that influence the agro-climate in any given location, such as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and its impacts in Asia and Africa. While El Niño events are all associated with substantial warming of the central and eastern part of the tropical Pacific Ocean, which in turn affects climate extremes globally, no two El Niño events are quite the same. For example, the 2015/16 El Niño developed similar strength to the 1997/98 El Niño, but their localized climate impacts were very different ³. Nevertheless, there are some regions that demonstrate a stronger link to El Niño than others. El Niño consistently brings drought and poor maize yields to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Southern Mozambique, while impacts further north in Malawi, Zambia, and Northern Mozambique are possible but less consistent. Therefore, maintaining high alerts on early warning systems is critical during El Niño events.

What does the latest foresight research show?

At the time of writing, all international climate science agencies, including the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States Government, predict a very high probability of a moderate-to-strong El Niño event in 2023/24 ^4–6. The Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) estimates that drier-than-average conditions are likely in Central America, the Caribbean, northern South America, parts of western and northern East Africa, Southern Africa, India, and Northern China, while positive IOD conditions during June to October may ease the drying conditions in East Africa during the short rain season in November-December ¹.

The El Niño forecast does not warrant the implementation of domestic market-protective policy measures. Even with the hypothetical worst-case scenario, where a historically strong El Niño affects maize and wheat yields in many regions simultaneously ^7,8, the total number of catastrophic and simultaneous breadbasket shocks globally in a given year is unlikely to increase because an ENSO event increases the probability of yield shocks in some regions but decreases in others ⁷. Further, preemptively implemented policies with uncertain forecasts can cause unintended economic impacts. For example, an integrated modeling analysis using subnational household data and crop models suggested that the Zambian government’s maize export ban during the early-season drought in the 2015/16 El Niño event blocked producers’ access to the regional food markets, reduced income, and exacerbated poverty of rural households ⁹.

A series of foresight analyses of economywide impacts of ENSO using an integrated analytical framework (Figure 1) identified a range of effective climate shock-mitigating interventions, including on-farm investments in technology and irrigation infrastructure, investments in roads and grain storage facilities to stabilize food markets, and social transfers to provide households with a cushion against immediate income and asset losses ^10–15. For Ethiopia specifically, IFPRI  used the Rural Investment and Policy Analysis (RIAPA) model to analyze El Niño’s impacts and the country’s policy responses and estimated that the combined interventions of food import subsidies, distribution of stored grains, and cash transfers could effectively reduce El Niño’s adverse impacts on the national poverty rate and the number of poor people ¹⁵.

It is worth noting that there is great uncertainty about how climate change will affect sea surface temperatures, ENSO, and teleconnections between regions. Analysis of historical ENSO events for the past 11,700 years indicates that any recorded changes in El Niño patterns are well within the range of natural variability. Similarly, climate model simulations without greenhouse gas emissions still produce large variations in ENSO due to the nature of the climate system ¹⁶.

What are key gaps, questions, and opportunities for further foresight research?

Enhanced weather and climate forecasting skills will allow the early detection and timely warning of floods and droughts. A well-maintained network of automated weather stations can improve the accuracy of El Niño impacts at the local level. Between 2000 and 2017, for example, advances in flood early-warning systems were estimated to have already helped to reduce global flood-related human casualties by 45 percent and the number of people affected by floods by 24 percent ¹⁷. Conservative estimates based on a meta-analysis of global studies suggest that the benefit-cost ratio for reliable climate information services is about 10 to 1, with potential global benefits as high as US$30 billion per year in increased agricultural productivity and $2 billion per year in reduced asset losses ¹⁸. With timely and reliable early warning information, policymakers can prepare for disasters and reduce damage by declaring emergencies early and getting resources where they are likely to be needed in advance.

Recognizing both the strengths and the uncertainties in current ENSO forecasts, policymakers should closely monitor the development of El Niño impacts and be prepared to coordinate policy responses in an agile way as the situation unfolds. In the Philippines, for example, in preparation for the 2015/16 El Niño, the Roadmap to Address the Impact of El Niño (RAIN) initiative was launched as a pan-government strategic action plan. The RAIN initiative enabled multiple government agencies to coordinate and respond to the challenges associated with climate variabilities on food security, energy security, health, and safety. In 2016, the Government of Philippines found that RAIN was successful in mitigating the impact of El Nino, particularly in ensuring sufficiency in supply of food and keeping food prices stable, but that coordination with local government units should be further strengthened to ensure the distribution of food and other resources are timely ¹⁹.

As the probability of an El Niño event increases in 2023, it is essential for governments, particularly in drought- and flood-prone regions, to proactively implement a range of risk-mitigating measures. Promoting climate-resilient agrifood systems, strengthening climate forecast and early warning capacities, and implementing agile risk management policies are critical to mitigating the adverse effects of climate variability. By fostering collaboration among various institutions and actors, policymakers can plan to develop “no-regret” interventions, including climate information services, climate-smart agricultural practices, access to finance, and social safety nets, and implement country-specific comprehensive strategies that safeguard communities from the likely impacts of El Niño. Recognizing the inherent uncertainties in ENSO forecasts, governments should closely monitor the development of El Niño impacts and be prepared to adapt their policies and response mechanisms as the situation evolves. Investing in these anticipatory policies and emergency responses will not only help minimize the economic damage and welfare losses during El Niño events but also contribute to building more climate-resilient agrifood systems in the long run.

The authors of this note are Jawoo Koo, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Natural Resources and Resilience Unit, and leader of the CGIAR Research Initiative on Digital Innovation; and Weston Anderson, an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Maryland, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and NASA, Earth Sciences Division.

If you have any feedback or questions about this note, please get in touch with Jawoo Koo (j.koo@cgiar.org).

References

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For more information, please check:

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Photo: Ethiopia, El Niño drought, 2016. ©EU/ECHO/Anouk Delafortrie (Flickr)