El Niño Projected To Cause Nearly Half A Million Deaths In Next Six Months
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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John Gibbons, great to have you back for the last word on the environment. Now, the first thing I want to ask you about before we get to El Nino is the prediction that Irish summers in future will feature what's called extreme evaporation. What on earth is extreme evaporation?
Yeah, good evening Matt. Yeah, this is yet something new to add to the list of things uh that we have to be worried about. Uh this is a study, Matt, coming out of Minuth University and they're looking obviously we're getting warmer summers. I think that's pretty clear. We're also getting warmer um nights, which is very much uh the the fingerprint of global warming. So we know all these things. Uh we're also I mean we still get a fair amount of rain, not not so much this summer, but generally speaking, we still get a fair amount of rain in the summer, although it's breaking very much between east and west uh coasts in Ireland.
What is extreme evaporation and why is it becoming more common in Ireland?
And it tends to come now and in
tense bursts rather than over lengthier periods of the money. That's right.
The the kind of soft Irish rain thing is unfortunately again is is is is more a thing of the past. So what we're finding is that the what they found is extreme evaporation is what they describe it. They said it's now eight times more likely to occur because of climate change and it's sorry,
what does extreme evaporation mean?
Okay. So first of all, what ha what's happening is and this is happening all around the world, is that because of intense heat, uh the ground is drying out. Now normally what happens is your ground and many people who who who have a a garden this summer will know exactly what I'm talking about. Essentially it dries out matte down maybe to a foot, even eighteen inches down. So if you took a shovel and started digging in your garden, you go down, it is bone dry. So the soil has essentially lost all its its moisture in the upper layer. And what's happening is that's penetrating further and further into the soil. Now, what happens then is you get some rainfall, it can't, the soil is is is resistant to moisture absorption because it's hardened.
So instead it evaporates away, giving us the phenomenon we call extreme evaporation. Now we see it in other countries where uh you have um extreme evaporation. Extreme drought, uh the the you know, the sort of baking surface, which is like it's effectively like brick. The and then the rainfall comes and it it it skates off that surface and ends up uh in people's uh front doors and in their towns and so on. So unfortunately the the the ability of the soils to absorb uh rainfall, especially excess rainfall, has to do with the extent to which they're already uh Softened and prepared. But hard, rock hard soil, which we're not really used to in Ireland, is preventing the water from being absorbed, and instead we get this rapidly accelerating evaporation process.
And it's only going as they say Matt in one direction. And I think the the researchers in Manute made made the point that the the two groups of people who need to be particularly aware of this obviously are farmers, but also people involved in fire management. This is going to be is uh it's increasingly and over the next decade and more, this is going to be a fact of life in Ireland, especially on our eastern seaboard, that we're going to have more and more fire conditions, and it's also going to be increasingly difficult for farmers. So, uh, for example, most uh agriculture in Ireland is uh rain irrigated rather than rather than artificially irrigated, and we will find uh we're going to need to to look
Look uh certain farming systems are going to need to look at irrigation.
Okay. Additional heat from El Nino is projected to cause four hundred and fifty thousand deaths in the next six months. Where?
Well, uh across the world, uh different different uh areas, for example, Nigeria, Indonesia, Sudan, India, Brazil, uh these are some of the top uh targets.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:56
2
What is extreme evaporation and why is it becoming more common in Ireland?
0:56–5:36
3
How does extreme evaporation affect soil, farming and fire risk?
5:36–9:11
4
What is El Niño and why is this upcoming event considered a ‘mega’ event?
9:11–10:00
5
Why do scientists predict up to 450,000 deaths from El Niño‑related heat?
10:00–11:12
6
Which countries are most vulnerable to the projected El Niño impacts?
11:12–12:33
7
Is El Niño a natural cycle or amplified by climate change?
12:33–13:17