El Niño and the fight over what it means

The document warns that a record-breaking El Niño event is being leveraged by disinformation campaigns to attribute extreme weather to natural cycles rather than fossil fuel emissions. It highlights the resulting food insecurity risks in Central America, Southern Africa, and South Asia, while arguing that the most effective defense against climate denial is not fact-checking, but the support of community-led information networks in places like Colombia, Nepal, and Nigeria.

• Meteorologists anticipate the current El Niño in the Pacific Ocean will be the strongest on record, peaking between September and December, with the UN World Food Programme estimating it could push at least 49 million people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027 across 45 countries.
• While El Niño is a natural cycle, scientists state that current heatwaves and fires, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, are driven by fossil fuel emissions; El Niño only contributes approximately 0.1 to 0.2 degrees to the long-term warming trend.
• Climate disinformation has evolved from outright denial to attacks on climate policy, often utilizing generative AI and surfacing during extreme weather events to frame human-caused disasters as naturally occurring phenomena.
• The document advocates for 'people-centred communication' over simple fact-checking, citing examples such as Grupo COMUNICARTE in Colombia, Nepal’s Indigenous Rights Foundation, and the Media Awareness and Justice Initiative in Nigeria as models for building trust and local ownership of climate data and conservation.
• Despite the signing of the "Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change" by 12 governments at COP30, the local media channels most critical for fighting disinformation in hard-hit regions remain underfunded.

APA

Rowley, S. (2026). El Niño and the fight over what it means. World Association for Christian Communication. https://waccglobal.org/el-nino-and-the-fight-over-what-it-means/

Chicago

Rowley, Saskia. El Niño and the fight over what it means. World Association for Christian Communication, 2026. https://waccglobal.org/el-nino-and-the-fight-over-what-it-means/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Rowley |first1=Saskia |title=El Niño and the fight over what it means |publisher=World Association for Christian Communication |date=10 August 2026 |url=https://waccglobal.org/el-nino-and-the-fight-over-what-it-means/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{rowley2026nio, author = {Rowley, Saskia}, title = {{El Niño and the fight over what it means}}, publisher = {World Association for Christian Communication}, year = {2026}, month = aug, url = {https://waccglobal.org/el-nino-and-the-fight-over-what-it-means/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }