The 3-degree Super El Niño threatening harvests and food prices

Super El Niño: the Pacific is already 3 degrees above normal

The Pacific has been sending signals for months that don't match the calendar. In September, when the effects of El Niño should still be at the starting gate, Santiago de Chile was already hit by a storm with hail the size of lemons, and the walkways at Iguazú Falls were closed due to floods that in 2014 didn't arrive until February. According to the messages in the thread, the sea surface temperature anomaly exceeds **3 degrees**, a reading that doesn't appear in the historical records, and underwater the buoys are measuring differentials of up to **10 degrees**. The question is not whether it will rain: it's how much eating is going to cost.

The mechanism is old and well known. The sun heats the Pacific every day, the trade winds push the warm water toward Asia, and a reservoir of energy builds up there. When the winds weaken, that mass travels toward the Americas and allows deep water to rise, transferring heat to the atmosphere through evaporation. With a differential of this magnitude, the result is torrential rain where it doesn't belong and drought where it hurts most. The organized records of previous El Niños make it possible to anticipate the pattern; what there is no precedent for is one *on steroids*.

What happens when the warm water reaches land

The usual calendar places the effects on the American coast between November and December. This year they have arrived early. Baja California and the southwestern United States began to feel the impact ahead of schedule, and in the Southern Cone the sequence is the usual one but compressed: the rains fill the Pantanal, where the Paraná and Paraguay rivers are born, and those floods take two or three months to reach Asunción, Corrientes and Santa Fe. If the water is already coming down in October, the question is where it will be in February.

The agricultural impact is the part that weighs most on the wallet. Excess moisture prevents planting or harvesting depending on when it arrives, and that hits Colombian and Brazilian coffee, cocoa from Mexico, Colombia and Peru, and much of the cereal produced in the American basin. Some argue that food prices could soar by **50% or 100%** for some products if the phenomenon coincides with the other tensions. It's not a firm prediction, it's a scenario based on the convergence of factors.

The cocktail: diesel, debt and Russian-Ukrainian wheat

El Niño doesn't arrive alone. It adds to a diesel crisis that threatens to drag down logistics, a possible bond crisis that could turn into a global debt crisis, and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which affects two of the most productive wheat regions on the planet. In parts of Africa and the Middle East, where bread is an essential part of the diet and is heavily subsidized, the combination could translate into famine and, with it, social unrest.

The most troubling historical comparison is 1877, when a famine associated with an extreme El Niño episode is estimated to have claimed **3% of the world's population**. It's not an exact parallel, but it helps gauge the magnitude of the energy involved.

How much cereal is in storage to hold out?

According to a calculation circulating in the thread, world cereal reserves stand at around **950 million tonnes**, equivalent to about four months of total consumption. The important nuance: only around **40%** of that cereal goes to feeding people, so the real margin stretches to about ten months. That is the buffer separating a price scare from a serious supply problem.

There is another line of thought that plays down the alarm. It argues that China will stop being a net food importer within a few years and become a leading exporter, which would push prices down. The argument has market logic, but it doesn't solve the problem of this year's lost harvest.

The buoy that measures what your home thermometer can't see

The classic objection is that if the models can't get tomorrow's weather right, how can they predict the Pacific. The answer lies in the instruments: buoys that take temperature readings at different depths and satellites that measure currents and even the height of the water to the centimeter. The phenomenon has been studied for **70 or 80 years**, and there are series of effects associated with each level of warming. That's not fortune-telling, it's measurement.

The deeper consequence is energetic. Raising the temperature of a liter of water by one degree requires a known amount of energy; multiplying that by the mass of the Pacific gives a figure that explains why scientists are talking about an unprecedented episode. The Mediterranean, with all its summer heat, is a puddle by comparison.

What still doesn't add up

One question remains unanswered: what specific pattern this will leave over the Iberian Peninsula. With drought entrenched and annual averages of around **1,000 millimeters** in some areas failing to materialize, there is total uncertainty over whether the rain will fall evenly or not. The phenomenon has been measured; its local effects, not yet.