A historic El Niño is coming that could cost the world trillions: Odd Lots | Zero: The Climate Race

El Niño functions as a powerful ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that reconfigures global weather, acting as a systemic shock to the world economy. Unlike localized weather events, El Niño’s simultaneous impact across disparate regions creates a persistent drag on economic growth, often knocking countries off their long-term trajectories rather than causing temporary, recoverable losses. Dartmouth geography professor Justin Mankin highlights that this phenomenon, when combined with background global warming, threatens to produce record-breaking temperatures and potentially trillions of dollars in global economic losses. Despite historical awareness of these cycles, modern economies remain poorly adapted, lacking the infrastructure and resilience to mitigate the cascading disruptions to agriculture, mining, and supply chains. As this record-strength event unfolds, it serves as a critical testbed for understanding how climate variability and human economic activity are increasingly and dangerously intertwined.