The economic consequences of El Niño can persist several years after the phenomenon itself and cost billions in lost income around the world, indicates a study published today by Science.
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In the years when it occurs, El Niño triggers far-reaching climate changes that cause devastating floods, crop-killing droughts, plummeting fish populations and a surge in tropical diseases.
With the forecast that El Niño will return this year, a team from Dartmouth College (USA) publishes a study that is one of the first to evaluate its long-term costs and indicates losses that are much higher than estimates from previous research.
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The team used models and derived global economic activity in the decades after the El Niño events of 1982-83 and 1997-98, finding a “persistent signature” of slowing economic growth more than five years later.
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Juan Pablo Rueda / EL TIEMPO
Globally, global income losses of $4.1 trillion and $5.7 trillion dollars, respectively, can be attributed to the effects of El Niño, in the half decade after each of these two studies, most of it at the expense of of the poorest nations in the tropics.
The researchers project global economic losses in the 21st century to reach $84 trillion, as climate change could amplify the frequency and intensity of El Niño, even if current commitments to reduce carbon emissions are met, they say. Darthmouth College in a statement.
Researchers estimate that this year’s El Niño phenomenon could slow the global economy by as much as $3 trillion by 2029.
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“We can say with certainty that societies and economies do not recover on their own,” said Christopher Callahan, a signatory to the study, adding that his data suggest that a post-El Niño recession can last up to 14 years, if not longer.
The last El Niño phenomenon caused the death of thousands of animals in Casanare.
Juan Diego Buitrago / EL TIEMPO
“In the tropics and in places affected by El Niño, growth is retarded for at least five years,” he explained. “The aggregate price of these events has never been fully quantified: you have to add up all depressed growth in the future, not just when the event occurs.”
The study indicates that the events of 1982-83 and 1997-98 caused the US Gross Domestic Product to be about 3% lower in 1988 and 2003 than it would have been without them.
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However, the GDP of tropical coastal nations such as Peru and Indonesia was lower by more than 10% that same year.
The global pattern of the effect of El Niño on the climate and on the prosperity of different countries “reflects the unequal distribution of wealth and climate risk, not to mention the responsibility of climate change, throughout the world,” he also said. study author Justin Mankin, from the same educational center.
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El Niño, he added, “amplifies the broader inequalities of climate change, disproportionately diminished by the least resilient and prepared among us.”
EFE AGENCY
