Close to half a million people could lose their lives through the current Super El Niño weather event.That’s according to a sobering new scientific report from Professor Michael Greenstone, co-founder of the University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab, assessing the impact of extreme temperature hikes.El Niño years start in the Pacific Ocean when surface temperatures become warmer than normal. Global weather is then thrown off by the new atmospheric circulation patterns, resulting in flooding, wildfires and droughts.”The estimate of 451,000 people is such a large number that it can be numbing, but it is made up of parents and children, grandparents and neighbours, people going to work, caring for families, and living their lives,” Prof Greenwood said.

These inconceivable death numbers are expected to occur between this month and February 2027, although the Super El Niño will likely claim even more victims all the way through to July of next year.Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, India and Sudan are the countries most affected, while 3,500 people could die in the US.Previous Super El Niño events have been devastating. It’s estimated that the 1997-1998 El Niño caused 23,000 deaths and $35 billion in property damage, and is also partly blamed for wiping out 15 percent of the world’s coral reefs.Greenstone and his team’s terrible forecast was created using peer-reviewed methods tracking the month-by-month relationship between temperature and additional heat deaths in 24,378 regions across the planet.