More than 451,000 Heat Deaths Projected from Super El Niño

A new Climate Impact Lab report finds this year’s “Super El Niño” is projected to lead to 451,000 deaths from extreme hot days. That’s on top of the impacts from droughts, wildfires and flooding expected from hotter temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns as this El Niño could become the strongest on record. The report identifies the regions where the greatest number of people are projected to die, pinpointing where immediate actions could offer the greatest opportunity to save lives.

“We have long been able to predict the impacts of temperatures on crops, and now we can predict their impact on the worst outcome—death. The result is that we now can estimate that 451,000 people may die in the coming months due to El Niño. This is such a large number that it can be numbing, but it is made up of parents and children, grandparents and neighbors, people going to work, caring for families, and living their lives,” says Michael Greenstone, a co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. “This report allows decisionmakers to see exactly where emergency actions can be taken now to save tens of thousands of lives in the coming months.”

The 451,000 deaths projected to occur during the first nine months (June-February) of El Niño alone are about 65 times larger than the 6,800 people believed to be dead or missing from the recent Nepal flash flood. These El Niño heat deaths will be concentrated overwhelmingly in the Global South. Over just the next six months, the report projects 66,800 additional deaths across the Sahel in Africa, with nearly half of those lives being lost in Nigeria (31,400). Elsewhere in the region, Sudan will face 17,500 additional heat deaths, Niger will face 10,000, and Chad 8,000. In South East Asia, the extra heat is projected to cause an additional 19,400 deaths in the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, and 19,300 deaths in Indonesia. India is projected to see 15,800 more deaths, while in South America, Brazil is most impacted with 13,300 deaths from El Niño’s heat.

Directing emergency response and resilience efforts to these high priority regions has the potential to avoid tens of thousands of deaths. The Climate Impact Lab’s Adaptation Inventory provides a rigorous and regularly updated evidence base of adaptation measures that have been proven to save lives based on peer-reviewed research, from early warning systems to cooling centers and protections for outdoor workers. Some of these measures are already underway to protect communities from this historic El Niño, but these new data underscore where efforts should be prioritized. They make clear that the mortality impacts due to extreme temperatures should be central to effective preparation for El Niño, alongside extensive existing efforts to mitigate risks to food security.

This year’s El Niño is also a “postcard from our future,” bringing temperatures climate change is projected to deliver 20 years in the future, the report finds. In this way, it offers a glimpse at what lies ahead without new investments in adaptation. When it comes to this longer-term adaptation planning, there are many promising ideas, including more accurate temperature forecasting and wider access to cooling technologies. The Climate Impact Lab’s ongoing research will help identify what works and what doesn’t to scale up reforms in the most vulnerable places.

“Increasing emergency response and better targeting our efforts can save many lives this year. But 20 years from now, once today’s extreme temperatures become the new normal, we don’t want to be in a constant state of emergency,” says report co-author Tamma Carleton, Faculty Head of Research for the Climate Impact Lab and an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “We need to mobilize resources now to design, deploy, and evaluate the  preparation and planning tools that will save lives in the years ahead.”

As El Niño progresses, the researchers will update their projections of additional deaths and share publicly.