And we can save lives.
NOAA puts the odds at 75% that this becomes the strongest El Niño ever measured — and it peaks in three months. Hundreds of millions of people will feel it in their power, their water, their livelihoods. El Niño Ready is a volunteer effort with one idea at its core: to save lives through communication. A disaster you can see coming is a disaster you can prevent. Warnings reach people. Money moves early. Systems hold.
Rowan is 12 and sings opera. His uncle, Baba Brinkman, is a science rapper. Hear the live version, and help us make the full track: a hip hop anthem about El Niño with a boys chorus singing the hook.
Help make the full track ↗ Rowan is in New York this week only. Invite him to perform at your event →We intend to leverage Climate Week to point at the storm already on the horizon: to underscore that it's here and growing in strength, and to alert the world that we can prepare, in the hope of saving lives.
Our only ask: have the host of your Climate Week event address the crowd for two minutes, from the main microphone, about El Niño. Include your email above and we'll send you five talking points. That's it.
“The models are forecasting something outside the envelope of anything we have ever observed.” — Zeke Hausfather · climate scientist, Berkeley Earth · The Climate Brink, July 2026
Sources: Hausfather, Carbon Brief · WFP/FAO via UN News · Hendrix, PIIE · The Climate Brink · Mongabay · Koplitz et al. 2016 · WHO experts via Mongabay
Between Climate Week and the El Niño peak there are roughly three months. That's not long enough to stop it — it's exactly long enough to prepare for it, and to prove that a climate event can be met with a plan instead of a shrug.
Harden grids for heat and storms, stage backup power for critical services, and get demand-response plans in place before the stress arrives.
Pre-position storage and treatment where drought and flood risk is elevated, and get reservoir and well contingency plans out of the drawer.
Forecasts only matter if they reach people in time, in their language, with something actionable attached. Build the channels now.
Use a live, global climate event to expand who talks about climate — from the people already at the conference to the people living the impacts.
Heat waves, storms, and drought-strained hydropower push grids past their limits — exactly when people need cooling, pumping, and communication most.
El Niño redraws the rain map: drought where communities expect rain, floods where they don't. Reservoirs, wells, and crops all sit downstream of that shift.
Fisheries collapse, harvests fail, supply chains snarl. The people hit hardest are the ones who never attend a climate conference.
Every September the climate community gathers in New York. This year the world's largest climate gathering lands three months before the strongest El Niño ever measured reaches its peak.
Imagine Climate Week pointed at the storm: what the science says, what's already happening, and what we can still do about power, water, and communication before the peak.
Imagine coming out the other side of El Niño with something different to say — because of what we did together.
Not about El Niño, but the host will give it two minutes from the stage. That is our only ask of every Climate Week event, and here is what to say.
Hosting one, or know one we missed? Tell us and it goes on the list. And if your Climate Week event isn't about El Niño, our only ask is two minutes about it from the main microphone.
Event ideas, requests, offers to help, people we should talk to — drop it here. It goes straight to the organizers’ inbox.