Summary
A Nature Comment argues that the developing 2026–27 El Niño could affect health not only through extreme weather, but also through food shortages, changing diets and possible shifts in exposure to infectious disease. The authors say planning should connect climate, food security and public health.
A Nature Comment published on 9 November argues that the developing 2026–27 El Niño could affect health through more than heat, floods and droughts. Its authors, Eoin McLaughlin and Matthias Beck, say food-system disruption could change what people eat and where they obtain food, with possible consequences for nutrition and exposure to infectious disease.
The commentary describes the cycle as shaping up to be among the strongest in more than a century. It says eastern Pacific sea-surface temperatures had already exceeded those recorded during four other very strong El Niño events in the previous 50 years. El Niño is a recurring climate pattern associated with warmer-than-usual Pacific waters and shifts in rainfall, which can bring drought or flooding to different regions.
How food disruption can affect health
The authors argue that a climate shock can threaten health indirectly as well as directly. Poor harvests, interrupted supplies and higher local food prices can make usual foods scarce or unaffordable. Households may then change their diets or seek different sources of food. The commentary identifies increased reliance on wild meat, and greater contact with animals that can carry zoonotic diseases, as possible links between food insecurity and infectious-disease risk.
The piece also points to direct health hazards associated with extreme weather, including heat, malnutrition, contaminated water and conditions that can favour the spread of vector-borne diseases. Its central emphasis is that these risks can interact: a weather shock may damage agriculture and health services at the same time that people’s food choices and exposure change.
These are potential pathways, not a prediction of a particular outbreak. The authors note that the timing of past pandemics alongside El Niño events does not by itself show that the climate pattern caused them. They argue instead for attention to the conditions through which a climate event might affect health, especially food access and local vulnerability.
Local resilience shapes the outcome
The commentary says the consequences will depend on how well local food, agriculture and health systems can absorb multiple pressures. International trade can help replace locally disrupted supplies, but higher prices or export restrictions can also make food harder to obtain. That means the same climate disturbance need not produce the same outcome everywhere.
McLaughlin and Beck call for climate, food-security and infectious-disease risks to be considered together. In practice, that means connecting early responses to weather and crop disruptions with measures to protect food access and public health. The argument is that preparedness should account not only for the strength of an El Niño, but also for the economic and institutional conditions that shape who can cope with it.