Angela Eagle has urged British people to keep enough food and water at home for a few days, saying what is El Niño could become the largest seen in 1,000 years. She said households should be ready before emergency services can get to them.
Angela Eagle and UK supplies
The environment secretary said people should keep a store of food so they can be more resilient if power or water goes out. Her warning is aimed at the UK, where officials are planning a preparedness campaign while forecasters are already braced for a much larger weather shock than usual.
“We’re about to experience probably the largest El Niño that has ever been seen, and that will lead to drier summers, wetter winters, with more extreme storms in this country.”
She added: “It will do a lot more damage in Asia with flooding, and therefore I think that we need to take it seriously.”
14 models and a 4C peak
Monday’s latest data put the ocean temperature at the heart of El Niño at 2.6C above the 30-year average. Any temperature anomaly above 0.5C is classed as an El Niño, so the current reading is far beyond the threshold that defines the pattern.
The peak is forecast to reach about 4C in November, based on the average of 14 different models. Zeke Hausfather said analysis of corals, tree rings and historical documents suggested no El Niño has reached this level in the last millennium.
That projection sits alongside a wider warning from António Guterres, who said: “El Niño is being supersized before our eyes. The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up.”
UN and global impacts
Celeste Saulo said El Niño has the potential to deliver “a massive blow to communities and economies across the world.” She also said: “We are already seeing disruption and devastation from droughts and floods and we expect these impacts to increase as El Niño intensifies.”
The concern is not just the ocean reading itself. The forecasted El Niño is expected to add extra heat to an atmosphere already warming rapidly, while the British government is still preparing only a campaign asking people to get ready for national emergencies.
This summer has already shown the scale of the wider risk: the most extreme heatwave ever recorded hit Europe and led to at least 35,000 deaths. For British households, the immediate instruction is simpler — keep food and water at home for a few days, and be ready for a period when basic services may be interrupted before help arrives.
