A strong El Niño could threaten crops and raise food prices

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:03:03

   This science corner is about the dreaded El Niño season that is coming up. And so this is a forecast for sea surface temperature anomalies. And basically what this means is that the ocean at this point has heated up so much that there's now a forecast on ocean temperatures that are going to exceed anything we have seen in recent history. So we're kind of looking at temperatures that might be four degrees above normal. That doesn't sound like a lot. But let's just look at this image. That top image is the sea surface temperature anomaly. That means how different the sea surface or the ocean temperatures are. Why does that matter? And this is compared to 1877 when we had the biggest El Niño year ever.

2. 1:03:47

   and I'll explain what that means in a moment, but why does this all matter? The reason is the oceans are the battery of weather. What happens at one part of the year is that the oceans absorb heat energy. and absorb, absorb, absorb, gets hotter and hotter and hotter and then that heat energy is released into the atmosphere and then the atmosphere drives the weather events that happen all over the world and it becomes somewhat predictable that you can estimate what the weather over the next year is going to be like based on how the temperatures are sitting in the ocean today.

3. 1:04:18

   And at this point, there is so much excess energy stored up in the oceans. I'll give you guys a statistic. It's about 11 million terawatt hours. the whole planet earth uses 25 000 terawatt hours in a year so 11 million extra terawatt hours of energy is currently stored up that's 500 years worth of human energy in this ocean and over the next few months that energy is going to be released into the atmosphere and that will absolutely 99 confidence that will make the upcoming year the hottest year on record by far that humans have ever experienced or at least that we've experienced in recent history where we didn't have data going going back a long time. It changes the trade winds, which changes how a lot of the weather evolves from a normal season. It changes the moisture in the atmosphere in certain parts of

4. 1:05:06

   the world. And I'll just give you some highlights of what this means over the coming year. There will be major atmospheric river events where you just get water dumped on you in the southwest in California and the Gulf Coast. You'll have very low snowfall and very high heat waves in the northern part of the US going up to Canada. You guys remember all those fires a couple years ago in Canada. Interior regions of the U.S., like in Phoenix and so on, they're already seeing temperatures at 106 degrees in May. A super El Niño, like is forecasted for this year, could extend that duration of these heat domes, which could create temperatures that we've never seen in those areas. Southern Argentina, Chile, Brazil could see record shattering heat waves. And this is where things start to get a little nasty, because when that happens, the crops start to

5. 1:05:49

   fail. And in many parts of the world, Brazil, India, Australia, these are critical local consumption for large populations, but also major ag export markets. So if Brazil's crop fails, if Australia's wheat crop fails, Australia's wheat crop goes to places like Indonesia and the Philippines. Hundreds of millions of people depend on that wheat crop. Hundreds of millions of people depend on the exports out of Brazil. Brazil's the world's largest ag exporter.

6. 1:06:16

   And the scariest one of all is if the monsoons fail, which is now a very high probability event in India. 150 million farmers in India that depend on their agricultural output or they don't make any money, they can't survive. And one and a half billion people that depend on that food. So the importance of this El Niño event goes beyond just like an interesting weather anecdote. But if you think about the second and third effects of this over the next year, you could see energy prices spiking and electricity spiking and the grid failing in parts of the southwest, commodity prices spiking all over the world.

7. 1:06:49

   And then you would see places like India, the Philippines, Vietnam starting to face some sort of unrest if there isn't enough food supply that's coming into those markets. And then the question in India is a really nasty one because there isn't a really good solution. India and markets like it that are significantly dependent on having their monsoon event, but also are currently facing a shortage of nitrogen based fertilizer because of the crisis with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, which we've talked about as a double whammy.

8. 1:07:18

   So over the next year in South Asia, you could see a calorie deficit and a major kind of economic crisis that starts to emerge. So this El Niño event, I just wanted to kind of bring it up as an interesting science corner because the data now seems pretty confirmed that over the next few months, we're going to have this record breaking El Niño. And these are the sorts of consequences that will play out over the next year. This is scary. God damn. What do you do about the the food problem that's a big problem that's a big problem and this is the commodity markets sorry did this did this happen the last time we had an el nino yeah so when we have el nino there's a severity of these sorts of events happening no i mean did we have a food shortage problem in the last el nino Thank you.

9. 1:08:00

   Oh, yeah, when we have El Niño's, there's food shortages that come out of Australia, Brazil, you see these events, that's a regular part of the thing. The problem this year is the index is so off the charts, it is so far beyond anything we've seen. And it's correlated, obviously, with the severity, that it triggers a crisis that may be, you know, really difficult to manage in a lot of places. So the U.S. is a net ag exporter.

10. 1:08:22

    So from a U.S. perspective, our big issues to worry about are the fire season. By the way, this does decrease Atlantic hurricanes. You're going to have fewer hurricanes this year in the South. But, you know, you have these kind of major storm events that happen in California, the heat waves, electricity prices. We're probably more stable than other parts of the world. But think about the Brazil, the ag export market is such a significant part of the economy and Brazil has a debt problem that this could end up becoming an economic problem in some parts of the world.

11. 1:08:49

    including Brazil. So the commodity markets are trading this El Niño event pretty actively right now. It's become kind of a focal area for a lot of folks in commodity markets. Can your super seeds help or no? That's a longer term solution. But I mean, look, we're like, at the end of the day, having, it's actually a good point, but having genetics, a crop genetics that can adapt to a more rapidly changing climate is going to be critical over the next couple of decades. That's a big kind of macro.

12. 1:09:16

    Another part of this, Friedberg, that as certain places heat up, they actually become viable places to put crops, i.e. Canada or the northern part of the United States.