05 A one-minute intro, from the main microphone
For whoever opens the event. This takes about a minute at a normal speaking pace. Read it as written, or put it in your own words. Every fact in it is on the front page, and the sources are in tab 3.
Before we start, one minute on El Niño. Climate Week has more than a thousand events, and only a handful are about it.
The biggest El Niño in history is forming right now. NOAA puts the odds at 75 percent that this becomes the strongest El Niño ever measured. It peaks in December, about three months from today.
Hundreds of millions of people will feel it. 49 million more people are forecast to go hungry by the end of next year.
People die when the warning doesn’t reach them, when the money arrives late, when the plan stays in the drawer. These are preventable deaths. They come weeks to months after a forecast that already exists.
Three months is not enough time to stop it. It is exactly enough time to prepare.
Spread the message to be El Niño Ready. If your organization works in power, water, food, or health, ask what it is doing before December. And sign up at elninoready.earth.
Thank you.
The biggest El Niño in history is forming right now.
NOAA puts the odds at 75% that this becomes the strongest El Niño ever measured. It peaks in December, about three months from today. Hundreds of millions of people will feel it in their power, their water, and their livelihoods.
A disaster you can see coming is a disaster you can prevent.
“The models are forecasting something outside the envelope of anything we have ever observed.”
Zeke Hausfather · climate scientist, Berkeley Earth · July 202601 What the forecasts say
The Pacific is forecast to hit +4.0 °C or more, nearly a full degree beyond anything ever measured. 91 of every 100 model runs break the all-time record.
More people without enough to eat by the end of next year, joining 225 million already going hungry. Central America is hit hardest.
Indonesia is already burning, with more fires this year than any year on record. The last time a super El Niño dried out the peat, an estimated 100,000 people died from the smoke.
They follow the shifted rains. Malaria, dengue, and cholera have come after every major El Niño.
Forecast to be the hottest year humans have ever lived through, by a wide margin.
The projected cost to the world over the five years that follow. Most of it is still preventable.
02 Why this is different
These deaths are the preventable kind.
Smoke, hunger, disease, and heat kill on a delay, weeks to months after a forecast that already exists. People die when the warning doesn’t reach them, when the money arrives after the disaster instead of before, and when the plan stays in the drawer.
Between Climate Week and the peak there are roughly three months. That is not long enough to stop it. It is exactly long enough to prepare for it.
03 What you can do before you leave this room
- Tell someone. Post the forecast. Put it in your newsletter. Bring it up at the next event you attend this week. Every share is a warning reaching someone it hadn’t reached.
- If you work in power, water, food, health, insurance, or emergency response: your organization has three months. Ask what it is doing before December, not after.
- If you host an event this week: give El Niño two minutes from the main microphone. Sign up and we’ll send you five talking points.
- Have an idea, a contact, a venue, or an hour? Drop it in the ideas form on the site. It goes straight to the organizers.
- Sign up for updates and the running list of El Niño eventselninoready.earth
04 El Niño at Climate Week NYC
Climate Week has more than a thousand events. Four are about El Niño. Here they are in the order they happen.