El Niño phenomenon causes malnutrition and sequelae in millions of minors, study says

The effects of the El Niño climate phenomenon on rainfall frequently cause malnutrition in millions of children, leaving long-term consequences on their health, said US scientists, calling for action against the “predictable” consequences of this phenomenon.

El Niño is a periodic event in the eastern Pacific Ocean that affects the global temperature of this region, triggering both heavy rains and droughts, they noted in a publication in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers from the United States studied 40 years of data on more than a million children in developing regions and compared their weight according to whether or not they suffered from the El Niño phenomenon.

They found that warmer and drier El Niño years increased child malnutrition in the tropics (an area of ​​the world where 20% of children are severely malnourished).

While children’s weight seems to rebound after El Niño, the impact of this phenomenon on their nutrition led to stunting for years.

In the study published in the journal Nature Communications, the research team shows that a normal child multiplies the rates of malnutrition by three with respect to what was observed during the coronavirus pandemic.

“It is very difficult to prepare for a global pandemic that few people saw coming,” says one of the authors, Amir Jina, of the Harris School of Public Police (Chicago, USA). “But the same cannot be said about El Niño events, which have a much greater potential impact on children’s long-term growth and health.”

In 2015, a year in which El Niño was very violent, researchers found that this led to malnutrition in six million children.

Although the consequences of global warming on the frequency of this phenomenon are not yet known, it is observed that it is making already dry and warm regions warmer and drier.

The study authors note that El Niño contributed greatly to slowing down the efforts of developing countries in their fight against hunger.

As this phenomenon can be predicted at least six months in advance, scientists are asking governments to integrate the impact of El Niño into their humanitarian aid plans.

“These are cyclical weather events that cause real tragedies on the planet,” said Jesse Anttila-Hughes, of the University of San Francisco.

For Anttila-Hughes, more studies should be carried out on the impact of El Niño on crop cycles at the regional level to compare them with the adaptation of agricultural systems to global warming.

“But that we have not acted in the face of an event like El Niño, which we know happens every few years, is a bad sign. Since many of the effects of climate change are increasingly unpredictable, “he said.