El Niño in a Warming World: Understanding Intensifying Risks and Building Climate Resilience
Joy A and Lakshmanan S
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22722580
ABSTRACT
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has long shaped global weather patterns, but in an era of accelerating climate change, the risks it carries are growing sharper and more consequential. The 2023–2024 El Niño event is one of the five strongest on record, and 2024 was the warmest year in the 175-year observational record, with a global mean near-surface temperature of 1.55 ± 0.13°C above the 1850–1900 average (World Meteorological Organization. 2025), which pushed global temperatures to unprecedented levels, intensified droughts and floods across multiple continents, disrupted food systems, and exposed the deepening vulnerability of developing nations. This short communication examines how a warming world amplifies the downstream consequences of El Niño events, with a particular focus on the socioeconomic risks facing nations such as India. It highlights that developing countries face an annual adaptation-finance requirement of US$310–365 billion by 2035, compared with only US$26 billion in international public adaptation finance in 2023 (United Nations Environment Programme. 2025). It further explores the immediate need for anticipatory, transformational climate resilience spanning early warning systems, adaptive agriculture, climate finance reform, and integrated governance. The paper argues that El Niño is no longer a periodic natural disruption to be managed reactively, but a compounding threat that demands structural, forward-looking adaptation at every level.
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