What Is El Niño, And How Will It Affect The UK?

El Nino is back, and it’s going to have a serious effect on our weather in the next few years – let’s take a look at what it is, what it’s going to do to the UK, and how we can be ready.

What are El Niño and La Niña?

To use the Met Office’s description, El Niño and La Niña are “terms which describe the biggest fluctuation in the Earth’s climate system and can have consequences across the globe.”

They result from gigantic oceanic current patterns that either sequester warm water deep in the Pacific Ocean (La Niña), or bring that warm water to the surface (El Niño), changing the surface temperature of the ocean. This pattern of warming and cooling in the ocean swaps over between every 3-7 years.

This has a range of knock-on effects across the world, but for our purposes we can simplify it to just its effects on the UK:

El Niño typically results in hotter, drier summers and colder, drier winters in the UK. During an El Niño cycle, temperatures are more extreme in the UK.

La Niña typically results in cooler, wetter summers and milder, wetter winters in the UK. During a La Niña cycle, temperatures are more mild in the UK.

The hottest year ever recorded globally was 2016, during an El Niño cycle. However, since 2019, we have been in a cooling La Niña period. Remember the heatwaves of the last few summers and the freezes during the winters? That’s right, those were during the more moderate, damp La Niña. We’re headed for sharper extremes at both ends of the temperature scale for the next 3-7 years.

Here’s a video from the Met Office, explaining what they are and how they happen:

What Should We Expect In The UK?

El Niño originates in the South Pacific, and so its effects take some time to reach the UK. According to the Met Office and Sky Weather analysts, we shouldn’t expect the see it hitting until the end of this summer – although the summer of 2023 began with an intense heatwave in June, followed by a prolonged downpour as a huge low-pressure front was pushed onto the UK from Europe… as the result of the continent suffering from an unprecedented and deadly heatwave. It’s the first of August as I’m writing this, and I’m not sure how this situation will develop as the summer draws to a close.

Those sources mentioned above draw one common thread as to what to expect, regardless of season: the weather will intensify.

Rainy summer? It rains ALL summer.

Heatwave? Hotter and longer.

Blizzard? Colder and with harsher winds.

Whatever the normal peaks for our weather, we can expect those peaks to be higher and the troughs deeper. According to the Met Office, the effects of El Niño often peak in December, meaning that while it will greatly exacerbate heatwaves in the summer, it may actually be more troublesome in deepening cold and intensifying winter storms.

How Can We Prepare in the UK?

I think that intense weather events are something that everyone should prepare for – our climate is becoming less stable with each passing year, and we’d be wise to adapt to its increasing extremes. El Nino simply takes that to another level again, with colder winters, hotter summers, and less average rainfall.

These weather events can cause a number of problems for us, but their primary hazard is as threat multipliers, making any other issue more severe. A spike in home heating prices that make it impossible to afford gas, for example, is a problem even when we aren’t in a bitterly cold El Nino winter.

I recommend keeping a solid baseline of preparedness, like the one you’ll find in the original UK Preppers Beginner’s Guide on this site, and putting some extra emphasis on the following:

Heatwave conditions:

• Stored water
• Water purification methods
• Knowledge of local water sources, in the event of disruption to supplies
• Refrigeration and food storage
• Shades and insulation against sun and heat
• Appropriate heatwave clothing – think of the sort of thing you’d wear in Morocco or India to stay comfortable while moving around outside
• If you grow your own plants, it may be wise to set up rainwater collection for them, and consider using more shaded conditions – like planting against a wall or setting up an awning – to prevent them from drying out in the harsh heat of the day
• You may wish to invest in a small air conditioning unit like the Avella S50 (which is on offer at the moment), especially if you have small children or babies, who could suffer enormously trying to sleep in heatwave conditions. I bitterly wished I had one of these while trying to get my 1-year-old son to sleep in a 36C house a few heatwaves ago.

Winter conditions:

• Appropriate home insulation (thick curtains and draft excluders can help here if you can’t afford to get builders in)
• Appropriate winter clothes and outdoor gear
• Extra blankets and comforters
• A bag of cold-weather supplies in your car in case of an accident on icy roads
• Consider a log-burning stove, fireplace or other off-grid heating source in the event of grid disruption
• If you grow your own food, you might want to lay in a few rolls of agricultural fleece to help protect them from a deep freeze
• There’s a full article on cheap or free winter survival tips here

If you are prepared and a severe weather event hits, you should try to help your neighbours. They may not be so prepared this time, but once they’ve seen for themselves how valuable it is to make simple preparations, they will likely improve their own preparedness, and the overall ability of your community to survive and function in adversity will increase.

Even if they don’t make more preps themselves, they will not forget that you helped them, and that’s almost as valuable.

I’m not sure what the future of our weather holds, but for at least the next 3-4 years, it won’t be calming down or becoming more moderate. We should try to be ready for whatever is coming.