Severe drought, energy shortages and food insecurity: What El Niño could mean for Europe this year

This year’s potentially record-breaking El Niño could impact food systems, energy production, economies, ecosystems and human wellbeing. Climate scientists have warned that El Niño has officially begun, as the world braces for a year of turbocharged weather. The natural phenomenon, which happens irregularly every two to seven years, occurs when sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific Ocean become unusually warm. This can push up global temperatures, paving the way for more extreme events. The last El Niño occurred from May 2023 through March 2024, and contributed towards record-breaking heat which fuelled a series of deadly heatwaves, wildfires and floods across the globe. 2026 is already predicted to be one of the hottest years on record, with the most recent seasonal forecast from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) warning that higher than normal temperatures are very likely for the summer and early autumn. Already, Europe has sweltered through a deadly May heatwave, while forecasters warn that 40°C temperatures and ‘tropical nights’ are expected across the Mediterranean in the coming days. But El Niño (which is Spanish for ‘the boy’) isn’t just impacting the temperature. Experts at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands have warned that the climate phenomenon can have severe knock-on effects, triggering drought, food insecurity, and even electricity shortages. El Niño’s impact on clean energy A lack of rainfall and low river flows can lead to widespread electricity shortages, particularly in regions where hydropower is a key part of the energy mix. This can lead to higher costs and CO2 emissions as electricity suppliers lean on fossil fuelled alternatives such as oil and coal. Climate change had already made this a reality, before El Niño had formed. Norway, which is often considered Europe’s “biggest battery” due to its vast network of dams, saw its snow reserves fall to their lowest levels in two decades due to a warm, dry winter. Experts say this has created a deficit of about 25TWh, around enough energy to power around 2.5 million homes for a year – and almost a fifth of Norway’s total hydropower output last year. Extreme heat can also reduce solar generation, due to what is known as the solar paradox. “It’s a common misconception that more sun always equals more power,” Ioanna Vergini, founder of wfy24.com, a platform that analyses weather data and climate volatility trends, tells Euronews Earth. “Photovoltaic (PV) cells are semiconductors, and like all electronics, they lose efficiency as temperature rises.” For every degree above 25°C, solar panel efficiency drops by about 0.4 to 0.5 per cent. How will El Niño impact food security? IHE Delft is working in areas of the world that are directly impacted by El Niño, and warns that food shortages could worsen over the next two years. In Nicaragua, for example, key crops such as maize and beans may fail in already fragile areas, leading to food insecurity and income loss. A lack of rain and low flows in rivers also mean that irrigated crops in Colombia, North-East Brazil and India will face severe restrictions or will need to rely more on groundwater, potentially causing overexploitation. This is also a concern for the EU, which imports around €188.6 billion of food annually from other countries. Staples such as wheat, maize and cocoa, are particularly susceptible to fail in extreme climates. El Niño could spark ‘severe’ droughts in Europe Yesterday (17 June) marked Desertification and Drought Day, which serves as an urgent reminder of the need to reduce land degradation and strengthen resilience to drought. Experts warn that El Niño is expected to trigger severe global droughts in 2026 and 2027, and Europe is not immune. “The warmer and drier weather forecasts for the Netherlands and across Europe will increase the risk of heatwaves and wildfires, which drought events such as 2018 and 2022 showed have significant impacts on ecosystems and human health,” IHE Delft warns. Low river flows in Europe will reduce the availability of freshwater, which may lead to restrictions on agriculture and cooling water use in power stations. “The coming El Niño is a reminder that drought is not only an environmental issue,” says Dr Micha Werner, a professor of drought resilience in the Water Resources and Ecosystems Department at IHE Delft. “It affects food systems, energy production, economies, ecosystems and human wellbeing. Building resilience requires action before a crisis unfolds.” Is El Niño overshadowing concern around climate change? El Niño’s arrival has sparked media attention around the globe, with headlines declaring a ‘super’ El Niño is looming. However, this isn’t an official scientific category, and isn't used by NOAA. Climate scientists have also warned that pundits are jumping on the “Super El Niño bandwagon” rather than focusing on the connection to climate change. Researchers at Columbia University said in a recent paper that while El Niño strength and frequency are important, especially the issue of whether these are being modified by global warming, a more important topic is the “ongoing, extraordinary, acceleration of ocean surface warming”. Some meteorologists predict that a typical El Niño event tends to cause a temporary 0.1-0.2℃ increase in the global mean temperature. This is not as significant as temperature rises fuelled by human-made climate change, which has pushed the global surface temperature up by approximately 1.3- 1.5℃ compared to pre-industrial levels. "El Niño is a natural phenomenon," says Climate scientist Friederike Otto from Imperial College London. "It comes and goes. Climate change on the contrary gets worse as long as we do not stop burning fossil fuels. So climate change is the reason to freak out."