El Niño

The BBC has an article by Matt McGrath about El Niño:

The strongest El Niño weather cycle on record is likely to increase the threat of hunger and disease for millions of people in 2016, aid agencies say. The weather phenomenon is set to exacerbate droughts in some areas, while increasing flooding in others. Some of the worst impacts are likely in Africa, with food shortages expected to peak in February.
Regions including the Caribbean and Central and South America will also be hit in the next six months. This periodic weather event, which tends to drive up global temperatures and disturb weather patterns, has helped push 2015 into the record books as the world's warmest year.
"By some measures, this has already been the strongest El Niño on record. It depends on exactly how you measure it," said Dr. Nick Klingaman from the University of Reading in the UK. "In a lot of tropical countries we are seeing big reductions in rainfall of the order of twenty to thirty percent. Indonesia has experienced a bad drought; the Indian monsoon was about fifteen percent below normal; and the forecasts for Brazil and Australia are for reduced monsoons."
As both droughts and floods continue, the scale of the potential impacts is worrying aid agencies. Around thirty million people are said to be facing food insecurity across Africa, a significant increase over the last year. Around a third of these people live in Ethiopia where ten million are projected to require humanitarian assistance in 2016.
El Niño is a naturally occurring weather episode that sees the warm waters of the central Pacific expand eastwards towards North and South America.
It was originally recognised by fishermen off the coast of South America in the 1600s with the appearance of unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean. El Niño translates as Little Boy, or the Christ Child. The phenomenon, which happens every two to seven years, usually peaks late in the calendar year, although the effects can persist well into the following spring and last up to twelve months.
El Niño is part of what is known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle; the opposite phase of the cycle is called La Niña. La Niña is sometimes referred to as the cold phase and El Niño the warm phase
The current El Niño episode is the strongest event since 1998 and is expected to be among the three most powerful ever recorded. According to the WMO, the peak three month average water surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific are expected to exceed two degrees Centigrade above normal.
The UK's Department for International Development says it is providing emergency support for nearly three million people and over a hundred thousand malnourished children. It says it will provide eight million people with food or cash support from January of 2016.
"If we fail to act now against this especially powerful El Niño, we will fail vulnerable people across our world," UK International Development Minister Nick Hurd said in a statement. "Ensuring security for those affected by El Niño is important to their countries but also in Britain's national interest. Only by protecting and stabilizing vulnerable countries can we ensure people are not forced to leave their homes in search of food or a new livelihood." According to the UN, around sixty million people have been forced to leave their homes because of conflict.
Aid agencies like Oxfam are worried that the impacts of the continuing El Niño in 2016 will add to existing stresses such as the wars in Syria, the South Sudan, and Yemen.They say that food shortages are likely to peak in Southern Africa in February of 2016, with Malawi estimating that almost three million people will require humanitarian assistance before March.
Drought and erratic rains have affected two million people across Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. More floods are expected in Central America in January.
"Millions of people in places like Ethiopia, Haiti, and Papua New Guinea are already feeling the effects of drought and crop failure," said Jane Cocking of Oxfam. "We urgently need to get help to these areas to make sure people have enough food and water.We cannot afford to allow other large-scale emergencies to develop elsewhere. If the world waits to respond to emerging crises in southern Africa and Latin America, we will not be able to cope," she said.
While many parts of the developing world will more directly feel the ongoing impacts of El Niño, the developed world will see impacts on food prices.
"It takes some time for the impacts of El Niño to feed through to social and economic systems," said Dr. Klingaman. "Historically food prices have gone up by five to ten percent for staples. Crops like coffee and rice and cocoa and sugar tend to be particularly affected."
The El Niño event is likely to tail off into the spring, but that may not be good news either. El Niños are often followed by La Niña events, which can have opposite but similarly harmful effects. Scientists say during an El Niño there is a huge transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. Normally, as in 1997 and 1998, that heat transfer tends to be followed by a cooling of the ocean, a La Niña event,
"It's possible but far from certain that this time next year we could be talking about the reverse of many of these impacts," said Dr. Klingaman. "In places where we are seeing droughts from El Niño, we could be seeing flooding from La Niña next year. "It's just as disruptive, it's just the other way round."

Rico says as long as it brings some rain to his father in California, but those other folks are screwed...