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El Niño has always had the power to disrupt weather across the globe, but now the pattern appears to be shifting in a way that could put parts of the United States at greater risk. From extreme storms and flooding to unusual heat and drought, the consequences could be felt across multiple regions. So what changed, and why are scientists watching the U.S. so closely?
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00:00The next global disaster won't begin with a meteorite or a giant tsunami.
00:05The culprit might be warm ocean water.
00:09A powerful climate pattern called El Nino could develop in 2026,
00:14and it may become the strongest one in more than 100 years.
00:19In the past, a similar El Nino triggered droughts and a famine that wiped out up to 60 million people.
00:28Now, El Nino is a climate pattern that starts in the Pacific Ocean.
00:32Huge areas of water near the equator become much warmer than normal.
00:37And we're not talking about a tiny patch of ocean.
00:40That warm water can spread for thousands of miles.
00:43When that happens, weather all over the planet goes crazy.
00:48Some places get massive floods, while others stop getting rain completely.
00:53Winds shift, storms move, and seasons change.
00:58And that's exactly what might have triggered the disaster in 1876.
01:03Massive droughts spread across Asia, Africa, and South America.
01:08Rain disappeared for months, and rivers dried up.
01:13Crops failed over enormous areas.
01:15Over the next two years, millions of people were slowly starving.
01:20Historians think that up to 3% of the world's population didn't survive this disaster.
01:26Even today, it remains one of the most fatal catastrophes in human history.
01:32Scientists believe that the El Nino from the late 1870s may have been one of the strongest ever recorded.
01:39Now, how did they figure it out?
01:42Obviously, nobody had satellites in the 1800s.
01:45There were no weather apps, or climate models, or modern instruments.
01:50So researchers had to investigate the past almost like detectives.
01:55And one of the biggest clues came from trees.
01:58You see, every year, a tree grows a new ring inside its trunk.
02:03In wet years, the rings grow thicker, because the tree gets more water and grows better.
02:10During droughts, the rings become thin and weak.
02:13So trees basically store weather records inside themselves.
02:18Scientists studied giant drought atlases built from tree rings gathered from all over the world,
02:24with some of those records going back hundreds of years.
02:28And they showed something alarming.
02:30Apparently, during the famine years, huge parts of the planet experienced extreme drought at the same time.
02:38Then, researchers checked old rainfall records from thousands of weather stations worldwide.
02:44Finally, they compared them with ocean temperature records gathered by sailors in the 1800s.
02:51All the evidence pointed to the same thing.
02:54The Pacific Ocean likely seriously warmed up during those years.
02:59And that's exactly what happens during an El Nino.
03:03But that one may have been way more extreme than normal.
03:07The event likely lasted around 16 to 18 months,
03:11several months longer than many other El Nino events in recorded history.
03:16That extra time matters a lot.
03:19Because the longer the Pacific Ocean stays unusually warm,
03:23the longer weather systems around the world remain broken.
03:27Some regions experienced droughts for several seasons in a row.
03:32Rainfall dropped to record lows in several parts of the planet.
03:36It hit Asia especially hard.
03:39Scientists found that parts of Asia went through the worst drought in about 800 years.
03:44Crops failed across huge regions instead of only one country or one farming zone.
03:50The thing is, a drought alone does not automatically lead to mass starvation.
03:56But when huge crop failures happen at the same time as food shortages and bad transportation,
04:03millions of people can suddenly end up with no food reaching them.
04:08And that's exactly what happened during the global famine.
04:11Anyway, El Nino could explain why weather patterns broke down across multiple continents at once.
04:18Even though modern technology makes us far more advanced than people from the 1870s,
04:24we still depend on stable weather for food, farming, water, and electricity.
04:30And El Nino has the power to disrupt our planet on a gigantic scale.
04:36The most unsettling part is that the past disaster was not caused by some single freak event.
04:42Researchers believe that those conditions develop naturally.
04:47And Earth's climate system is very capable of producing something this extreme again.
04:53Today, the world is much hotter than it was in the 1870s.
04:58So, if another super El Nino appeared in the future, could droughts become even more severe?
05:05An El Nino can mess with the weather almost everywhere on Earth at the same time.
05:10One of the first big changes often happens during hurricane season.
05:15Normally, the Atlantic Ocean produces many tropical storms and hurricanes.
05:20But a strong El Nino can create powerful winds high in the atmosphere.
05:25Those winds basically tear storms apart before they can fully grow.
05:30So, places like the Caribbean and parts of the Atlantic sometimes see fewer hurricanes during strong El Nino years.
05:38But, in the Pacific, it's the opposite story.
05:43Storm activity often ramps up in the central and eastern parts of the ocean.
05:47That can bring trouble for places like Hawaii, and sometimes even the southwest U.S., if storms move in that
05:54direction.
05:55Then, winter hits.
05:57And this is when El Nino starts shaking things up in North America.
06:01The northern U.S., western Canada, and Alaska usually turn warmer than normal, and some areas get less snow.
06:10But it doesn't mean these regions don't have winter.
06:13Cold snaps can still show up out of nowhere.
06:16At the same time, the southern U.S. often gets wetter.
06:20A stronger jet stream, which is basically fast wind high in the sky at around 30,000 to 45,000
06:28feet, pushes more storms across the south.
06:31They bring heavy rain, flooding, and cool weather to regions that are usually much drier.
06:37Other parts of the world can get hit even harder.
06:40For example, India and parts of Southeast Asia often lose important summer monsoon rains during El Nino years.
06:49And those rains are critical, because hundreds of millions of people depend on them for farming and water supplies.
06:56The monsoon weakens.
06:59Drought spreads fast.
07:01The Caribbean also gets much drier than normal during a strong El Nino.
07:06In some areas, there are even water shortages and crop damage.
07:10In Southeast Africa, drought conditions can become dangerous during the Southern Hemisphere summer, especially from December to February.
07:19A powerful El Nino may already be building in the Pacific Ocean right now.
07:25And some researchers think it could become one of the strongest ever recorded.
07:31Ocean temperatures in part of the Pacific are heating up fast.
07:35In some places, the water might become more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal.
07:41But for the planet's climate system, this difference is massive.
07:46The danger is actually even bigger than it looks.
07:50Today, we have better technology.
07:52Satellites, forecasting, global communication.
07:55But our society still has weak spots.
07:58Food supply chains are actually under pressure.
08:02And many regions are also dealing with drought.
08:05Ocean temperatures have been breaking records for years.
08:09Some farming areas are becoming less stable because of the weather changes.
08:14Extreme weather events are becoming more spread out every year.
08:18A strong El Nino could pour gasoline on all of that.
08:23Scientists are especially worried about how unpredictable the weather could become over the next year.
08:29Oh, by the way, El Nino is just part of a big cycle.
08:33Normally, winds near the surface of the Pacific Ocean, called trade winds, blow from east to west.
08:40They push warm, sun-heated water toward Asia.
08:43At the same time, colder water rises up from deep below near North and South America.
08:50This is the reason why the ocean surface ends up uneven.
08:54The water near Indonesia can be about 1.5 feet higher than near Ecuador.
08:59But sometimes, those winds weaken.
09:02When that happens, the warm water starts sliding back toward the east.
09:07The eastern Pacific heats up, and the western side cools down.
09:12That's an El Nino.
09:14If the opposite happens, and the trade winds get stronger,
09:18even more cold water rises from the deep ocean.
09:21As a result, the Pacific cools down more than usual.
09:25That phase is called a La Nina.
09:28El Nino and La Nina are basically two sides of the same system.
09:34Together, they're part of a cycle called Enzo.
09:37Usually, an El Nino lasts about 9 to 12 months, while La Nina can stick around for 1 to 3
09:44years.
09:46But not all El Ninos are the same.
09:49The classic type is called an Eastern Pacific El Nino.
09:53That's the one where the eastern side of the Pacific warms up the most.
09:57But there's another kind called a Central Pacific El Nino.
10:01In this case, the warmer water sits more in the middle of the ocean.
10:12Scientists have just detected something unusual spreading across the Pacific Ocean.
10:18A gigantic mass of abnormally warm water is rapidly expanding near the equator.
10:23And some researchers say it is showing characteristics associated with the early stages of a potentially powerful El Nino event.
10:32The discovery is attracting attention because the Pacific is not simply warming.
10:38In some areas, temperatures have surged far above normal levels over an enormous region spanning thousands of kilometers.
10:45And when something like this happens in the Pacific, the effects rarely stay there.
10:51The Pacific Ocean covers more than 165 million square kilometers, making it the largest body of water on Earth.
10:59Because of its size, even relatively small temperature changes can influence weather systems across entire continents.
11:08What scientists are seeing now is a growing reservoir of warm water, both at the surface and beneath it.
11:16According to ocean monitoring systems, parts of the Central and Eastern Pacific have recently recorded temperature anomalies exceeding 2 degrees
11:25Celsius above average.
11:28That may not sound dramatic, but across such a vast area, it represents an extraordinary amount of excess heat.
11:36And that heat is beginning to move.
11:38Researchers are particularly interested in what is happening beneath the surface.
11:43Satellite measurements and ocean buoys have identified large subsurface warm water pools stretching thousands of kilometers across the Pacific.
11:53These hidden reservoirs often act as fuel for developing El Nino events.
11:58As the heat rises toward the surface, it can strengthen atmospheric changes and amplify weather disruptions around the world.
12:06And this is where things become serious.
12:09Several of the strongest El Nino events in recorded history began with similar patterns.
12:15The famous events of 1982-83, 1997-98, and 2015-16 all started with expanding warm water anomalies before eventually
12:27reshaping global weather for months.
12:29The 1997 event became one of the most expensive weather-related disasters ever recorded,
12:35causing more than $30 billion in damages worldwide.
12:39Floods, droughts, crop losses, and extreme storms affected countries across multiple continents.
12:46Scientists are not saying that current conditions will necessarily reach that level.
12:51But they are saying the similarities are difficult to ignore.
12:55The reason El Nino attracts so much attention is because it effectively reorganizes parts of Earth's climate system.
13:03Normally, trade winds push warm Pacific water toward Indonesia and Australia.
13:09During El Nino, those winds weaken, allowing warm water to spread eastward toward the Americas.
13:16That shift changes rainfall patterns, storm tracks, temperatures, and ocean circulation on a global scale.
13:24In some regions, it brings destructive flooding.
13:28In others, severe drought.
13:30And because the atmosphere is interconnected,
13:33the effects can appear thousands of kilometers away from the Pacific itself.
13:37What makes the current situation especially unusual is that it is developing during a period when global ocean temperatures are
13:45already breaking records.
13:47In recent years, multiple ocean temperature records have been shattered.
13:52Some researchers describe the current oceans as carrying an unprecedented amount of stored heat compared to previous decades.
14:00Now, an El Nino event may be forming on top of that already elevated baseline.
14:07Some climate scientists believe this combination could amplify certain weather extremes if the warming continues.
14:15Meteorological agencies around the world are increasing monitoring efforts.
14:19Satellites, ocean buoys, underwater sensors, and atmospheric models are being used continuously to track the evolution of the warming pattern.
14:30The goal is simple.
14:32Determine whether this is merely a strong El Nino or the beginning of something much larger.
14:39Several regions could feel the effects first.
14:43Parts of South America often experience increased rainfall during major El Nino years.
14:48Australia and Indonesia frequently face increased drought risk.
14:53Certain parts of North America can see altered winter storm patterns,
14:57while some tropical cyclone regions become more active and others less active.
15:03The exact impacts remain uncertain.
15:06But one thing is becoming increasingly clear.
15:09Scientists are not looking at a localized weather anomaly anymore.
15:13They are watching a climate pattern powerful enough to influence conditions across much of the planet.
15:19And right now, that pattern appears to be growing.
15:23Because beneath the Pacific Ocean, an enormous amount of heat is moving into position.
15:29And if current trends continue, the weather maps of the world may start looking very different in the months ahead.
15:37Go buy yourself a good pair of rain boots and start stocking up on food because a Godzilla El Nino
15:44might be on the way.
15:46If it really happens, parts of the southern United States and southern Europe could soon be hit by intense rainfall
15:51and face a much higher risk of flooding.
15:56The same goes for South America.
15:59A series of catastrophic rainstorms could flood roads and trigger huge mudslides in countries like Peru and Ecuador.
16:06While some places deal with too much rain, others may get none at all.
16:11Indonesia and Australia, for example, might experience severe drought,
16:15which could cause massive wildfires and wipe out their water supplies.
16:21Experts think El Nino could happen sometime between June and August of 2026 and stick around until the end of
16:28the year.
16:28There's even a 1 in 3 chance it could turn into a Super El Nino by late fall.
16:34I mean, a really intense catastrophic version of this event that's also known as the Godzilla El Nino.
16:42The problem is, even if you're in part of the world that isn't directly affected by this phenomenon,
16:47you might see its consequences anyway.
16:50Because it can ruin crops and cause global food shortages.
16:54That makes your everyday groceries like rice, coffee and sugar way more expensive.
16:58No one wants that, but it's not like we can avoid El Nino.
17:01It's just a natural part of Earth's climate that's been happening for millions of years.
17:07It all starts in the Pacific Ocean.
17:09And since this ocean is so huge, whatever happens there kind of ripples across the whole planet.
17:15You see, under normal climate conditions, tropical winds blow west along the equator,
17:20pushing warm surface water from South America toward Asia.
17:24As that warm water moves away, cold water rises up from the deep ocean to take its place.
17:30We call this process upwelling.
17:32But the Earth always likes to surprise us, right?
17:35So, from time to time, a cycle known as ENSO shows up and breaks those rules.
17:40This natural cycle is divided into three phases.
17:43La Niña, El Nino, and an in-between stage where things are relatively quiet, known as ENSO neutral.
17:50La Niña is the cold phase.
17:53When it happens, those tropical winds get even stronger than usual, shoving more warm water toward Asia.
18:00Near the Americas, super cold water from the deep ocean rushes up to the surface.
18:05This shifts the jet stream, those high-altitude winds that steer our weather further north.
18:11For the U.S., a La Niña year usually means a warmer, drier south and a much colder, rainier north.
18:18It also tends to make hurricane seasons in the Atlantic way more active and dangerous.
18:24El Nino is the exact opposite.
18:27It is the hot phase.
18:29This is when the tropical winds weaken or even reverse.
18:33The sea surface temperatures can reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit above their normal levels.
18:37Instead of being pushed away, all that warm water flows back east toward the Americas.
18:43This pulls the jet stream way south of where it usually is,
18:46and that changes the weather completely.
18:49Areas in the northern U.S. and Canada stay warmer and drier than usual,
18:54while the southeast and the Gulf Coast get soaked with constant rain and flooding.
19:00El Nino and La Niña episodes tend to happen every 3 to 7 years,
19:04with each phase usually sticking around for about a year.
19:07But don't expect a fixed schedule.
19:09It happens.
19:10At the beginning of 2026, the world is watching it all unfold again.
19:14A weak La Niña is finally fading away, and little by little, it's turning into an El Nino.
19:20And experts think it could be a massive one.
19:23All the signs from the ocean and the atmosphere show a powerful El Nino pattern picking up speed as we
19:29head toward the fall.
19:30If the water keeps warming up at this rate, some meteorologists believe this event could become exceptionally strong.
19:38A super El Nino is on a whole different level.
19:41It happens when the Pacific gets so warm that it basically throws the world's weather off balance.
19:47This can lead to much more extreme weather shifts.
19:50Instead of just a little more rain, you get massive floods.
19:54Instead of a short period of dry weather, you get a serious drought.
19:58This event also pushes storms into places they don't normally go, and that ends up affecting the whole world.
20:05If you're not a big fan of summer, I have bad news.
20:08A new Godzilla El Nino is probably going to push global temperatures to record-breaking heights.
20:14It's going to be unbearably hot.
20:17The last time the world had to deal with a super El Nino was back in 2015.
20:22That year, the water in the Pacific got incredibly hot, and that set off a chain reaction of disasters around
20:29the globe.
20:30The hurricane season was unlike anything we'd ever seen.
20:34Usually, we see four or five tropical cyclones in the Pacific, but in 2015, there were 16.
20:39That's insane.
20:41At one point, three massive Category 4 hurricanes, named Kilo, Ignacio, and Ximena, were all spinning at the exact same
20:50time out at sea.
20:52That was a first since we started keeping track.
20:55Luckily, none of them actually hit land.
20:58But we weren't always that lucky.
21:00In July 2015, Hurricane Dolores sent record-breaking rain into Southern California, causing over $50 million in damage.
21:08Later that same year, Hurricane Marty hit the coast of Mexico, leading to another $30 million in losses.
21:16South America was hit with way more rain than usual.
21:20Rivers in Argentina and Paraguay overflowed, forcing thousands of people to evacuate.
21:26Because of El Nino, 2015 became the hottest year on record at that time, and it brought terrible droughts.
21:34In Ethiopia, for example, some parts of the country got less than a third of their usual rain.
21:39Crops failed big time, and over 8 million people were left without enough food.
21:45So, are we going to face something that intense again?
21:49Well, it's hard to say.
21:50Most experts agree that an El Nino is in fact coming, but we're still not sure about its strength.
21:57Early data shows everything from a weak event to a record-breaking Super El Nino.
22:02Scientists are watching it closely, but they need a few more months to see how it actually behaves.
22:10The El Nino is expected to show up by summer.
22:12Usually, we don't feel the effects right away, but since this one is moving so fast, we might start seeing
22:18weird weather sooner than usual.
22:21One big change we can expect has to do with the Atlantic hurricane season, and that's good news for the
22:27U.S.
22:29Usually, the El Nino lowers the overall numbers of hurricanes in the Atlantic.
22:33That's because it creates high air pressure and stronger winds high up in the sky that basically rip the storms
22:39apart before they can grow.
22:42In this part of the U.S., this makes the whole atmosphere more stable, which stops small storms from powering
22:48up into giant hurricanes.
22:50But the main impact of El Nino usually happens in winter, and it messes with the snow.
22:56If you live in the northern U.S. or the Midwest, you will probably see a lot less snow than
23:01usual.
23:02Of course, these are all just predictions based on what happened in previous years, but it's not a perfect science.
23:08After all, we never see the exact same weather two years in a row, and when you throw an El
23:12Nino into the mix, things get even more unpredictable.
23:17One thing's for sure.
23:18Since this phenomenon affects millions of people, experts have to keep a close eye on it every year.
23:24Seasonal forecasts for El Nino and La Nina, too, show how the weather is likely to change, helping authorities plan
23:31ahead for energy and water needs.
23:34This way, cities can prepare for too much rain or severe drought, and farmers know what to expect for their
23:41crops.
23:42But most importantly, weather alerts let people find shelters and get communities ready before disasters hit, and that saves lives.
23:51Well, if it seems like things on Earth aren't already strange, our home planet just got a little stranger.
23:59There's a hidden symmetry that nobody knew about.
24:03Now, scientists are trying to figure out why this symmetry exists.
24:08And the strangest part, the answer may involve one of the most powerful and disastrous climate systems on Earth, El
24:15Nino.
24:17There's this curious thing about Earth.
24:19If you split it into the northern and southern hemispheres, you'll see that they reflect almost the same amount of
24:25sunlight back into space.
24:27But they look completely different.
24:30There's more land up north.
24:33And more ocean down south.
24:35There are different clouds, different weather, and still, the energy balance is almost equal.
24:41The clever term for this phenomenon is hemispheric albedo symmetry.
24:47It's a bit of a mystery for us, but the reason might be simple.
24:52The southern hemisphere has more clouds that bounce sunlight back.
24:57At the same time, the north has more land and pollution particles that also reflect light.
25:03It somehow evens out.
25:06But then, things get more interesting.
25:08A group of scientists started questioning, what if this balance isn't only north-south?
25:15What if Earth is also balanced in a different direction?
25:18They dug into satellite data and found something surprising.
25:22There seems to be an east-west balance, too.
25:26It's not a perfect line you can draw on a map, of course, but statistically, it shows up.
25:32If you split Earth along the 27-degree east and 153-degree west meridians,
25:39you'll get two halves that reflect almost the same amount of sunlight.
25:44That line cuts through Europe, Africa, Turkey on one side,
25:47and there's Alaska and a big part of the ocean on the other.
25:51Admittedly, these are very different places, but the numbers match.
25:56To figure it all out, researchers used 25 years of data from NASA's Ceres satellites,
26:02from 2001 to 2025.
26:06These satellites track how much sunlight Earth gets and how much it sends back into space.
26:13If the numbers are steady, the planet's temperature is stable.
26:16But if they change, the weather starts warming or cooling.
26:21The research team broke everything down.
26:23Oceans with no ice, with ice, land, cloudy skies, clear skies, every piece of the system.
26:30And then they tested different ways of slicing the planet to see if any pattern stayed stable.
26:36Well, one of them did.
26:39That 27-degree east line kept showing a bizarre kind of balance.
26:44Both sides ended up with almost the same mix of ocean and land and a similar volume of clouds.
26:50They even had similar amounts of sunlight reflected from clear skies.
26:55At first, the researchers were skeptical.
26:57After all, Earth is a sphere.
26:59And if you slice it in enough different ways,
27:01you can sometimes find patterns that don't really mean anything.
27:06But when they started testing this pattern more, it didn't disappear.
27:11Even better, it showed a triple symmetry.
27:14First, this is the only east-west line that creates this balance.
27:17Second, it doesn't drift.
27:20It stays basically locked at 27 degrees east all the way from 2001 to today.
27:26And third, both halves of the planet end up with almost identical amounts of land and ocean.
27:33But then, the question is, what's actually causing this symmetry?
27:37Right now, everything points to ENSO, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
27:42It's basically a massive cycle where the Pacific Ocean shifts between warm and cool phases.
27:49ENSO shows up every two to seven years.
27:52And it keeps flipping between three states – El Niño, La Niña, and a neutral phase.
28:00El Niño is the warm phase.
28:02The trade winds – permanent winds that blow from east to west at the equator – get weaker, or sometimes
28:09even reverse.
28:10That allows warm water to pile up in the central and east Pacific.
28:15Meanwhile, cold deep water near South America stops coming up.
28:19This pattern affects the whole world.
28:22There is more rain in parts of the Americas, but the weather gets extremely dry in places like Australia and
28:29parts of Asia.
28:31La Niña is the opposite.
28:33The trade winds get stronger than usual and shove warm water towards Asia.
28:37As a result, more cold, nutrient-rich water ends up in the eastern Pacific.
28:42So, the weather usually gets wetter in Australia and Indonesia, and drier in parts of the southern U.S.
28:50And then, there's also the neutral phase, when nothing exciting is happening and ocean temperatures are closer to normal.
28:57There's another curious fact.
28:59The name of this weather pattern also splits the system in two.
29:03El Niño, La Niña, is the ocean part that's linked to temperature changes in the Pacific.
29:09But southern oscillation is the air part.
29:12Meaning changes in air pressure between the western Pacific near Australia and the eastern Pacific near Tahiti.
29:20And because the Pacific is massive, this one system ends up influencing the entire world's weather.
29:26Rainfalls, floods, droughts, heat patterns, even hurricanes.
29:31Now, let's get back to that symmetry idea.
29:34The researchers noticed that the tiny year-to-year shifts in that east-west balance seem to line up with
29:40ENSO changes.
29:41And they couldn't explain it without something called the walker circulation.
29:46It's basically a huge loop of rising and sinking air over the Pacific, which connects cloud systems all over the
29:54tropics.
29:55It's like a giant conveyor belt, moving heat and moisture around the planet.
30:00That circulation changes where clouds form and how much sunlight gets reflected back into space.
30:07So, during La Niña, the eastern hemisphere reflects a bit more sunlight.
30:12During El Niño, the western hemisphere takes over.
30:16The system keeps flipping back and forth, and over time, it kind of anchors that symmetry line near 27 degrees
30:23east.
30:25Now, this means Earth's climate isn't a set of separate systems.
30:29It's all connected.
30:30And here's why we should care.
30:33We already know that Earth's albedo symmetry controls how much solar energy gets reflected back into space.
30:40Right now, it's about 29%.
30:43And even small changes in that number matter a lot for global warming.
30:48The problem is, many climate models still don't reproduce this east-west symmetry correctly.
30:55And we need to change that.
30:56Because if a model misses this pattern, it might also miss something even more important.
31:03And that's where things get a little worrying.
31:05The same climate system that helps maintain this balance is also responsible for El Niño and La Niña.
31:11And some researchers think the next El Niño could become the strongest in more than 100 years.
31:19It might hit already in 2026.
31:23Back in the past, a similar El Niño triggered droughts and a famine that wiped out up to 60 million
31:29people.
31:31In 1876, massive droughts spread across Asia, Africa, and South America.
31:36Rain disappeared for months, and rivers dried up.
31:41Crops failed over enormous areas.
31:43Over the next two years, millions of people were slowly starving.
31:48Historians think that up to 3% of the world's population didn't survive that disaster.
31:54Even today, it remains one of the most fatal catastrophes in human history.
32:00Now, even though modern technology makes us far more advanced than people from the 1870s,
32:05we still depend on stable weather for food, farming, water, and electricity.
32:11And El Niño has the power to disrupt our planet on a gigantic scale.
32:16The most unsettling part is that the past disaster was not caused by some single freak event.
32:22Researchers believe that those conditions develop naturally,
32:26and Earth's climate system can easily produce something this extreme again.
32:31Today, the world is much hotter than it was in the 1870s.
32:35So, if another super El Niño appeared in the future, droughts could become even more severe.
32:43A powerful El Niño may already be building in the Pacific Ocean right now.
32:48And some researchers think it could become one of the strongest ever recorded.
32:52Ocean temperatures in part of the Pacific are heating up fast.
32:56In some places, the water might become more than 5 degrees hotter than normal.
33:02For the planet's climate system, this difference is massive.
33:07The danger is actually even bigger than it looks.
33:10Today, we have satellites forecasting global communication.
33:14But there are still weak spots.
33:17Food supply chains are actually under pressure.
33:19And many regions are already dealing with drought.
33:23Ocean temperatures have been breaking records for years.
33:26Some farming areas are becoming less stable because of weather changes.
33:32Extreme weather events are becoming more spread out every year.
33:36And a strong El Niño could pour gasoline on all of that.