Britain must prepare for El Niño shocks, says MP

An MP has urged the Prime Minister to prepare the UK for a "super-El Niño" climate event that could have a major impact on global food supplies and economies.

Chris Hinchliff, the Labour MP for North East Hertfordshire, wrote to Andy Burnham asking him to "take urgent action" and to chair the government's Climate and Nature Security Taskforce.

El Niño is a natural weather pattern in the Pacific, but when combined with human-driven global warming can cause a spike in temperatures and more extreme weather.

A government spokesperson said: "The Climate and Nature Security Taskforce will ensure that Britain is better prepared for the threats that the climate crisis creates, including from El Niño."

Meteorologists have been tracking the development of this year's El Niño, which is part of a natural ebb and flow cycle with its cooler sister, La Niña.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) recently said the already "strong" system was "expected to strengthen during August to October", leading to "above normal temperatures" worldwide.

This would increase the risk of drought in some areas and excessive rainfall in others.

Since 2015 - when the latest "super" El Niño took place - the world has experienced its 11 warmest years on record.

Hinchliff said all the indications suggested "this event will be off the charts in terms of the level of impact".

"Even smaller El Niño events have created enormous supply chain impacts, caused crop failures and rising food prices, wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars across the global economy," he wrote.

Celeste Saulo, WMO's secretary-general, said governments and communities had "a window of opportunity to anticipate risks and act before impacts unfold".

"El Niño is one of the most closely monitored climate phenomena in the world, but forecasts in themselves do not prevent hazards, people do," she said.

While the UK is not directly in the line of fire from El Niño, it can sometimes make British winters colder and summers hotter.

Hayley Fowler, a professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University, supported Hinchliff's message in a post on X.

"There is a direct link between El Niño and wet winters in the UK through increased sea surface temperatures in the north Atlantic - these are already very warm this year.

"We can expect a very wet winter with frequent storms and floods this year in the UK," she wrote.

Hinchliff said he had written to Burnham because "this is an important moment to be emphasising the need for swift and decisive action, to improve the resilience of our country to extreme weather".

"We have farmers already ringing alarm bells around food shortages because of the impact on the harvest this year," he said.

"I think it's clear for everyone to see that our country has a long way to go before it's properly adapted to the new climate reality that we face."

He called on the government to accelerate food security planning, review the resilience of infrastructure to extreme heat, urgently plant trees and restore wetlands to mitigate flooding, and implement heat adaptation planning for schools and hospitals.

A government spokesperson said its taskforce would focus on "cascading and systemic risks" from climate phenomena such as El Niño, recognising impacts were felt "far beyond the regions where they originate".

It is also working to protect the UK's food security, investing £11.7bn in sustainable farming and "billions more in the development of new technology and climate resilient crops to increase yields".

Do you have a story suggestion for Beds, Herts or Bucks? Contact us below.

Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.