Al Jazeera

SCRI's Executive Director Laurie Laybourn joined Al Jazeera to discuss the unfolding El Niño event, described by UK Met Office modelling as potentially the strongest in centuries. Laybourn set out the immediate risks - severe drought across the tropics compounding existing conflict and fragility - and the knock-on threat to global food security, with rice and cocoa harvests among the crops most exposed.

Laurie warned of a level of global economic dislocation, spanning harvests and shipping chokepoints, not seen since the Covid-19 pandemic, framing the event as a preview of the "new, extreme normal" that accelerating climate change will keep producing.

“Even countries that might feel that they have a particular level of wealth, or they're there geographically away from this will be impacted by the domino effects that will ripple round the world. We've seen in the 2020s so far time and time again that major global scale shocks affect us all globally, some very, very severely and that will be even worse with this.”