AFTER THE BELL: El Niño is now the strongest on record — a war room is needed

This ‘super‑duper El Niño’ will drive a scorching, drought‑hit summer for South Africa, putting rural subsistence farmers, maize harvests and water infrastructure at severe risk. And it will all be made worse by ongoing state failure.

Brace yourself, folks, for a scorcher of a summer and a sweltering test for our ailing state, which should set up a “war room” to prepare for the coming calamity before it’s too late.

James Hansen, a renowned climate scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, says that the current El Niño is already a record breaker and we ain’t seen nothing yet.

“The El Niño has blossomed. It is off the charts. Usual measures of El Niño have blown past prior record levels in the period with good data, even though maximum effects are still several months in the future.”

The preferred metric of Hansen and his colleagues is the heat anomaly in the upper 300m of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. “Anomaly” is climate speak for the deviation from average temperatures, and El Niño is triggered when these rise past certain thresholds in the Equatorial Pacific.

According to Hansen’s calculations, this anomaly “already exceeds the 1997-98 super El Niño”.

This is a chilling prognosis and forecast and it comes from one of the best scientists in the business – Hansen is the former director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His observations on this front are scientific gold and he has dubbed this event the “super-duper El Niño” – a new nickname to go alongside “Godzilla” and others.

What’s concerning is that fewer than three months after it formed in the tropical Pacific, a scientist of Hansen’s calibre is calling it the strongest on record and as he notes, its full impact – and intensity – is still several months in the future.

For South Africa, this almost certainly portends a summer of blazing drought during the key growing season for maize and other grains – and things will be far worse in other countries in the region, such as Malawi, which rely heavily on rain-fed subsistence agriculture.

South Africa fortunately is in a good position on some fronts to weather this storm. Last season’s bumper maize crop provides a nice surplus to cushion the looming blow, and food inflation is currently at 16-year lows.

Soil moisture and dam levels are also brimming, thanks to the recent La Niñas – El Niño’s extreme opposite which typically brings good rain to this region. According to data compiled by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), dam levels in all nine provinces currently exceed 80%.

But there is no room for complacency if this El Niño – which is not expected to fade before March or April next year – is already off the charts in August.

The Government of National Unity should, among other things, consider establishing an El Niño “war room” to confront this head-on – the warnings have grown graver with each passing week and the science is ironclad.

This would focus the attention of the President, relevant ministers and departments to craft strategies and allocate scarce resources appropriately.