The call to action, led by the University of Bristol and published in The Lancet, highlights how although it is widely-acknowledged El Niño exacerbates wide-ranging health risks posed by climate change, the additional threats presented remain largely unquantified. The researchers emphasise that as the El Niño cycle can be forecasted months in advance, preparatory measures should be put in place to mitigate the impact, especially in countries most vulnerable.
Study lead author Dr Ruby Lieber, Senior Research Associate in Climate Science at the University of Bristol, said: “We know the number of people affected by climate-related disasters is strongly influenced by the El Niño cycle, but there is little evidence available establishing how much of the health burden can be attributed to climate change and how much was driven by El Niño.
“Since the current El Niño pushes many regions into more extreme climates, there’s a pressing and unprecedented need to better understand, measure and pinpoint the different dangers for individual countries and places.”
The study recommends five important actions to gain this comprehensive risk overview, which holds the key to being able to tackle and minimise the likely consequences, including the spread of infectious diseases, malnutrition, and various heat-related conditions such as dehydration and heatstroke.
The points are:
- The United Nations, and other international bodies, must address the urgent need to protect health and prevent disease when El Niño is officially declared.
- National governments should be supported to assess the effects of El Niño on population health and to implement necessary precautions, including early-warning systems.
- Scale up El Niño-focused climate-health attribution studies and use the findings to inform and shape policy and practice.
- Continuously review the health effects of El Niño to gain comprehensive picture of its evolving impact and help identify and address any evidence gaps.
- Assess the cost-effectiveness of climate-health measures taken, such as early warning systems, bolstering health system capacity, urban flood protection and food system resilience actions.
Dr Lieber said: “These steps will require greater collaboration between climate and health researchers and, equally fundamental, concerted action between research funders, the World Health Organization (WHO), the wider UN system, the World Bank, and non-governmental organisations.
“Partnership working is imperative and such global entities need to urgently call on advances in attribution science to more accurately recognise and assess how much of the repercussions are the result of human-induced climate change and how much are a result of El Niño. By isolating the El Niño-related impacts, we can generate much more targeted and event-specific actions.”
A significant El Niño, which describes the warming of sea surface temperature, is likely to occur towards the end of this year with some forecasts predicting the strongest event on record. The direct effects of El Niño will be felt across the globe and may heighten instances of extreme weather in regions such as India, East Asia, South America, parts of Africa and the West Pacific.
Co-author Dann Mitchell, Shanta Professorial Chair in Planetary Health at the University of Bristol, added: “It’s clear that we cannot afford to ignore this emerging threat, which poses potentially devastating but predictable risks to communities around the world.
“Climate and health researchers must unite, with the full backing of national and international agencies, to create a much more advanced evidence base. This will enable us to ramp up global resilience and implement adaptation strategies to mitigate the many deeply concerning health implications, particularly for countries more acutely exposed.”
Paper
‘Enhancing preparedness for the impending super El Niño’ by R. Lieber, D. Mitchell, and A. Haines in The Lancet