Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus presented the following excerpts from a “frightening” forecast from the University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab, posted on September 23. The original report was written by Michael Greenstone, Tamma Carleton, Genevieve Maricle and Emily Grover-Kopec.
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Scientists project that global land temperatures will be 1.2⁰C above normal in the coming months, due in large part to the current “Super El Niño” that began in June and is expected to last through the Northern Hemisphere spring.
These anomalously warm conditions will resemble the higher temperatures that climate change is projected to deliver 20 years in the future and will lead to 44% more extremely hot days than we would expect in a normal year. El Niño is effectively pushing us into the future — exposing us to temperatures that won’t be the norm for another two decades — before we have time to adapt and protect ourselves.
As a result, we project that 451,000 lives will be lost due to heat the first nine months (June–February) of El Niño, compared to a normal year. This is about 65 times larger than the 6800 people believed to be dead or missing from the recent Nepal flash flood. In just the next 6 months, this includes 239,000 ± 11,000 deaths across the globe.
With current forecasts suggesting El Niño will remain in place through March–May 2027, we expect all of these numbers to grow even higher, particularly as impacts such as higher-than-average temperatures and heat-related deaths will linger into June and July.
Global South hit hardest
Regions that are projected to see the largest increase in heat-related deaths over the next six months are spread across the Global South.
The most impacted countries across the Sahel are forecasted to see an additional 66,800 heat deaths from September–February compared to a normal year, with nearly half of those lives being lost in Nigeria (31,400). Elsewhere in the region, Sudan will face 17,500 additional heat deaths; Niger will face 10,000 and Chad 8000.
In South East Asia, the extra heat is projected to cause an additional 19,400 deaths in the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, and 19,300 deaths in Indonesia. Other highly impacted regions over the next six months include India (15,800) and Brazil (13,300).
Our analysis shows that the timing of deaths will vary considerably between countries over the next six months. Those countries projected to see the largest number of excess heat-related deaths in the latter half of our forecast period — allowing more time to act — include Nigeria and Indonesia, which will face 15,400 and 10,400 more heat deaths than normal between December and February, respectively, and Brazil and India, which we project to see 8000 and 7400 additional heat-related deaths, respectively, over that three-month period.
Looking beyond the current 6-month forecast window — which runs through February 2027 — we anticipate that key areas in the northern hemisphere, such as India and Pakistan, will see heat-related deaths continue to rise into their summer.
We will provide updated, interactive forecasts pinpointing where heat-related deaths are likely to be concentrated and shift over time, giving decision-makers what they need to target interventions in real time through this period.
Postcard from the future
The anomalously warm temperatures that most of the globe will see during this El Niño event are a “postcard from the future”: while they feel anomalous now, they will become normal just a few decades into the future.
Mortality projections for the near term provide a signal of where we are headed if new adaptation investments do not materialise. The difference with climate change is that there is more time to undertake adaptations to save lives.
[Abridged from Climate and Capitalism. Read the full report, including impact maps at impactlab.org.]