News

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have launched their first-ever Joint Anticipatory Action Appeal, seeking $202 million to protect nearly nine million people from the potential impact of a strong El Niño weather pattern across 22 ...

El Niño, the natural phenomenon that pushes up global temperatures every few years, has begun and is expected to strengthen into 2027. Scientists are predicting that this episode is likely to be strong, and could even break records.

When El Niño-linked weather extremes hit agrifood systems, the damage can be counted in failed crops, dead livestock, flooded fields and lost income. But the real cost often begins where that first tally ends. One failed season can degrade soils, deplete seed stocks, reduce herds and deepen debt,...

Hundreds of years ago, Peruvian fishers noticed that every few years the usually rich waters off South America would warm, and the anchoveta, one of their most reliable catches, would vanish. Because this often happened around Christmastime, they called the phenomenon El Niño de Navidad. Over tim...

A strong El Niño is developing in a world already made hotter and less predictable by climate change. For agriculture, that combination is especially dangerous. El Niño raises global temperatures, disrupts rainfall patterns and can trigger weather extremes across key growing regions. One of the c...

From late 2023 through 2024, extreme heat, amplified by a strong El Niño, brought exceptional drought to large parts of the country, especially the Amazon region. River levels sank to historic lows and forests dried out. By the end of the season, catastrophic wildfires had burned an area roughly ...

A new El Niño phase is likely to begin within weeks, putting agriculture on alert around the world. New analyses by experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) allow for detailed mapping of where El Nino-linked drought is most likely to impact crops and pasturelands.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the British Embassy Mogadishu (BEM) have launched an Anticipatory Action and Preparedness programme in Somalia ahead of an expected El Niño event.

The alarm bells are sounding – according to the United States National Weather Service, El Niño has returned.

Acute food insecurity is set to potentially increase in magnitude and severity in 18 hunger “Hotspots” comprising a total of 22 countries, a new UN early warning report has found.

After a protracted three-year presence La Niña has left the global atmospheric scene, making way for a likely imminent transition to El Niño, a meteorological event that typically distributes weather patterns in the opposite way.