How Will Latin America's Super El Niño Affect the Top Food-Exporting Region?
- Latin America is bracing for what experts say could be the strongest El Niño on record, raising questions about how the climate phenomenon will affect the world's top food-exporting region. El Niño, characterised by unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, disrupts weather patterns worldwide. In Latin America, it typically brings heavier rainfall to the south while increasing drought risks further north, affecting agriculture, energy production, trade routes and the environment
- An unusually wet Southern Hemisphere winter, disruptions to Pacific marine ecosystems and dry conditions are already affecting parts of the Caribbean and the Amazon. Researchers expect the phenomenon to strengthen from September and potentially exceed the intensity of the 2015-16 El Niño, the strongest in modern records.
- In Argentina's fertile Pampas, Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil, El Niño usually brings above-normal rainfall. Despite concerns over a strong or "super" El Niño, analysts said more water is generally good for crops.
- Germán Heinzenknecht, a meteorologist at Argentina's Applied Climatology Consultancy, said that, as in previous cycles, El Niño could boost soybeans, corn and wheat harvests by providing soil moisture for planting and improving water availability during the December to February summer.
- A stronger El Niño could also mean some rural areas will flood, though these will mostly be lands geographically prone to such events, Heinzenknecht added. Muddy or flooded roads can prevent South American farmers from accessing fields, complicating efforts to apply fertilisers and chemicals to protect yields, he said.
- Many of the rural roads, crisscrossing the region's southern agricultural heartlands, are already in poor condition. Heavy rains from September could also cause floods in cities and transport routes to ports, prompting Paraguay's government to put military units on alert and mobilise civilian engineering teams in July. Peru's northern coast faces flooding while the highlands suffer from water scarcity, a pattern likely to be repeated in Chile and elsewhere on the Pacific coast, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
- An uneven El Niño-driven rainfall could reshape South America’s energy and trade flows, boosting Argentine natural-gas exports as drought hits parts of Brazil while heavier rains support hydropower, but worsening dry conditions threaten Amazon waterways, agriculture, and Panama Canal shipping.
(Source: Oil Now Guyana)