357: Forecasting Disaster: A ‘super’ El Niño? And the case for early action
As headlines warn of a possible ‘super El Niño’ later this year, we ask: how do we respond to a warning before it becomes a catastrophe?
About this episode
As headlines warn of a possible ‘super El Niño’ later this year, we ask: how do we respond to a warning before it becomes a catastrophe?
The last major El Niño brought record heat, crop failures, flooding and deepening food insecurity across large parts of the world. This time, the question is not only what may be coming, but whether we are any better prepared to act on the warning?
Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson look at what the forecasts do and do not tell us about the climate ahead in 2026, and what it means to prepare for a crisis that is still uncertain, but increasingly hard to ignore.
And in a world of shrinking aid budgets and rising climate risk, they’re joined by Andrew Kruczkiewicz from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and Columbia Climate School - how do you justify spending on a crisis that hasn’t happened yet?
From anticipatory finance and early warning systems to the politics of aid cuts and the difficulty of communicating risk in real time, they explore what climate preparedness looks like when the stakes are already human and immediate.
Learn More:
🔴 Browse the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre’s work on linking climate science and action
🩺 Read the WHO explainer on ENSO and health
🌊 Get up to date on NOAA’s latest ENSO Diagnostic discussion for the clearest official snapshot of what forecasters are currently saying about the chances of El Niño emerging in 2026
🛰️ Explore the World Food Programme’s work on anticipatory action and see their Bangladesh case study to see how it’s used in practice
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation:
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Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
Full Transcript
Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hello, and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.
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Paul Dickinson: And I'm Paul Dickinson. And sadly, Christiana's not here.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's right, but this week, as headlines warn of possible Super El Nino later this year, we asked what forecasters are actually saying and how we can prepare to act on major events, even in the event of uncertainty. And we speak to Andrew Kruczkiewicz, Climate Advisor at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. Thanks for being here.
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Archive news clip: Oh boy, we could potentially be looking at a historic El Nino developing as we go through the...
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Archive news clip: A weather pattern known as a Super El Nino could be upon us later this year, according to climate scientists.
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Archive news clip: The weather phenomenon El Nino, this year, 2026, could be the year of a Super El Nino.
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Archive news clip: And judging by the anomalies that we're seeing in the sea surface temperatures, it looks like yes, we are indeed on track.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Paul, there has been a burst of coverage in recent weeks warning of a possible Super El Nino this year, in 2026. What is a Super El Nino, Paul?
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Paul Dickinson: Well, I'm glad you've asked me, Tom, because I have a fantastic definition, and that is that it's the warm phase of the El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. It's a large-scale climate pattern centred on the tropical Pacific, where sea surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation shift in ways that can influence weather and seasonal conditions around the whole world. And I mean, it typically, just in simple terms, it can lead to more extreme heat, particularly if it's strong. It doesn't cause the same things everywhere. A forecast of El Nino doesn't tell you what's going to happen in each country, but you can expect it. It's a large-scale climate signal, and it's generally associated with increased heat around the world.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, that's right. So when there is an El Nino year, it's generally associated with a bump in temperatures, right? So it's not that the El Ninos are caused by climate. They've always been happening, this fluctuation of El Nino and La Nina. But when you combine the underlying increase in global temperature, and then you get an El Nino year on top of that, then you end up in real trouble, often. And many of our most catastrophic climate years have been El Nino years. Now, in recent weeks, again, as we said, we've seen this possible sense that there could be a super El Nino, which is a supercharged system that sort of begins to play out this year and next year. This would be a big deal in climate. So we want to take a moment to think about it. And also to just try and put ourselves in the shoes. And we'll speak to one of these people who has these jobs later to think about the uncertainty that's baked into climate forecasting. Because if we think this might be coming, of course, like anything, there are degrees of possibility and uncertainty, but we still need to try and plan for them and think about what that would really mean. So we'll get into that a little bit later. So let's talk about what the forecasters are actually saying. This is interesting, this comes from NOAA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration in the US. And they say that the El Nino is likely to emerge between June and August, 62% chance to persist through the end of the year. And if it does form, the strength remains uncertain. There's a one in three chance that it becomes strong and therefore may turn into this super El Nino. Why does this matter, Paul, these kinds of projections?
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Paul Dickinson: Well, many of us remember that in the last major El Nino, that's the 23-24 one, it coincided with record global heat, intense drought, flood risk, food insecurity and health impacts across multiple regions and the World Health Organization and other agencies highlighted heightened concern around food health and disease risks, including dengue fever, malaria, heat stress, water contamination and malnutrition. So it's like a big disaster, frankly. And I'm really struck, you know, there's, I think that there are trivial choices we face between essentially fossil fuels and renewable power or meat against vegetarian food. You know, they're not important in terms of severity, but the choices between starvation and death for millions are serious choices. And so I'm just sort of overwhelmed by the passive and intellectual challenge of mitigation and the responses to extreme weather, which are part of adaptation. And they're a kind of life and death struggle. That's where it's hitting me when you hear someone sort of saying, oh, well, you know, it's not realistic to go to net zero. I mean, how realistic is it to go without food and water?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right. And I think if you look back, many of the sort of, it's hard in our noisy world to remember what happened last week, let alone what happened a couple of years ago. But if you cast your mind back over the last few years, there are things that probably stand out to you and to the listeners of moments when climate change cut through. I mean, these devastating wildfires in Australia in 2019, 2020, when there were all these horrible pictures of koalas that had been burned by the fires, where it burned vast areas of the country. Likewise, some of the droughts that have led to crop failures in southern and eastern Africa, as well as in India. And of course, the terrible coral bleaching episodes that happened, for example, in the Great Barrier Reef and all over the world. And every time this happened, we lose a significant percentage of the coral that is left. The severe flooding that happened in Peru, do you remember that, in 23, 24? All of these events are connected to moments where we have a confluence of a warming planet combined with the El Nino cycle. So again, we're dealing with uncertainties here. Maybe it won't form this year. Maybe it will form next year. We know it's cyclical, so it will come at some point. But now that we know that there appears to be this pretty high likelihood that it will form this year, we need to begin thinking about some of these things that have happened in recent years and think they might happen again, either later this northern summer, over the winter period or into 2027.
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Paul Dickinson: You and I, Tom, have been looking at these graphs for 20 years or more. And Philip Larkin said this about death. He said, most things never happen. This one will. Well, what's that seed? Plant the seed and reap the whirlwind. We've had the emissions and now, pretty much, give or take, it's here.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It is here. But there's an important point to make there, which is preparation matters. Because actually, what we've seen is that anticipatory action in many places can prevent the worst impacts. I mean, just to take an example, in the Philippines, there was six consecutive cyclones in 30 days in 2024. And this became the first real-world activation of the Philippines' forecast-based financing system. Funds were released automatically when wind speed and damage threshold were met up to 72 hours before landfall. So all of a sudden, there were funds available to deal with the worst impacts of this. Bangladesh is another example. In 2020, the World Food Programme can reach 350,000 people five days before a forecasted flood, using more money and early warning messaging. So this anticipatory action in Bangladesh has shown a positive impact on families' food security. 36% fewer people went a day without eating throughout the floods when they received assistance. So there is this opportunity to use anticipatory intelligence and forecasting to actually put things in place to prevent the worst impacts from damaging people. Of course, we're not going to get away from the impacts of climate manifesting in extreme weather, but we have a real responsibility to really spend the money that is available strategically. And these sorts of moments can prevent much larger amounts of money being needed later on, if you're able to get ahead of these events.
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Paul Dickinson: And that may involve not cutting the aid budget to the bone, because what might be a library or a civic centre or fixing the potholes in your country, or the defence budget sucking up ever more, can be the difference between life and death for very large numbers of people. It's extraordinary the way our aid budgets are so significant. I hope listeners will be able to feel the meaning of our aid budget during this interview.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Should we just go there with a little bit of outrage for a moment, because this has been one of the worst stories over the last few years. I mean, we have seen the Trump administration destroy USAID. We talked about that. We've seen the Labour government come in. And while David Lammy was Foreign Secretary slash the UK development budget by, I think, about 50 percent. We've seen this happen all over the world. I mean, the UK one is particularly disappointing because we actually came in thinking that Labour were going to take a stance of leading with more values and defending some of their principles. But I think it's been heartbreaking to see that just at this moment, when climate impacts begin to accelerate, aid budgets just vanish like smoke. And these people, unless we are able to properly prepare and provide real mechanisms for financing, then they're just going to be left to deal with these terrible shocks that will just keep coming and keep coming and keep them in this cycle of impact and further impact. So we should, that's a really good point you make, Paul.
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Paul Dickinson: But in defense of Labour, I'm just going to say that millions of pounds have gone into GB News, which would say, you know, we've got to stop funding people on the other side of the world. So it didn't happen just by accident.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's not defense of Labour. That's a moment for leadership, where Labour have to stand up to that. They're empowering, they have a responsibility to face them down. Anyway, but this wasn't the point of this topic, was it? So now we're going to go to our guest this week. Andrew Kruczkiewicz is a climate advisor at the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre and also a senior researcher at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at the Columbia Climate School. Much of his work seeks to ask, how should climate information actually be translated into useful decisions before disasters strike? That's here from Andrew and maybe from my dog, depending on whether you can hear the barking. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us on Outrage and Optimism. We're delighted to be talking to you at this critical time. Now, I know you have a range of roles and different things that you do and a deep expertise. So I wonder if you could just start by you setting out your role and the kinds of things that you get up to at the moment.
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): Thank you, Tom. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for creating the space for this discussion at this critical moment. So I am a meteorologist by background. And yeah, my path to the work that I do is perhaps non-traditional in some ways. But yes, I am based at Columbia University's Climate School. So we have IRI, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, and also I'm affiliated with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. However, approximately anywhere from 20% to 30% to 40% of my work each year goes to supporting integration of science and integration of data into humanitarian action policy and practice. And I do that primarily through my hat at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, which is a reference centre for the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So you are right at the centre of how science can inform policy and policy responses, which is perfect for this conversation. And up until now, what we've been talking about is what a strong El Nino could mean in broad terms. And from your perspective, I'd love to just start by asking you, when a signal like this starts to emerge, what sort of work starts to go on to prepare for this, even though we don't know whether it's going to happen yet?
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): Yes. So one of my first reactions to that question is, we must think about, we must reflect on what time of year and what month we are in. And that's a very important first step. We do have a phenomenon that we call the Spring Predictability Barrier. Spring here referring to the Northern Hemisphere Spring. And what the Spring Predictability Barrier is, is a slightly less skillful time of year when we're talking about seasonal climate forecasts. This period of time starts in approximately February and lasts in various degrees to June or July. So that doesn't mean the forecasts can't be trusted if they're issued in February, March, April, May. No, that's not what it means. It does mean that once we reach June and especially July, we are through the Spring Predictability Barrier. And therefore we have enhanced confidence in what the seasonal climate forecasts are indicating for the following fall to winter periods where we traditionally, but the data shows that we traditionally see the strongest El Nino occurrence and also the strongest impacts from El Nino. So what are we doing now? With that in mind, yes, we must prepare and we must start talking about preparation across sectors. And why must we do that? Well, the data shows that the impacts from El Nino are wide-ranging, there are direct impacts, there are indirect impacts, and we do have historical data on what those impacts can look like, in which geographic areas, in which seasons moving forward. But we must keep that in mind. You know, now we are taking stock of what the different seasonal forecasts are saying. I was just in Nairobi at the United Nations office in Nairobi for some meetings, actually not related to El Nino directly, but indirectly related. And certainly El Nino is coming up even in those discussions, if not during plenary, on the sidelines for sure. But yes, we must keep in mind that we are still well within what we call the spring predictability barrier, and things can change.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And that, I mean, you know, forgive my layman's analogy, but in the best of all possible worlds, I suppose, we would get to this point, we would think, there is a strong possibility, even in the El Nino this year, someone who understands science and policy would kind of pull the lever on a bat signal that would light up the sky, and then institutions around the world would start mobilizing capital to prepare to protect vulnerable people. How close to that is the reality that you're living through at the moment?
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): Well, there are a few challenges, or a few considerations, let's say, to highlight. One is, there are different ways to define both El Nino occurrence and these thresholds of enhanced risk for El Nino. And there's different reasons for that. One reason is that we see El Nino impacts manifest in different ways on a global scale. And that varies in different months, across different areas of the world. So there are different ways to talk about both El Nino occurrence and monitor the progression towards certain critical thresholds, which are also designed in different ways to be tailored for different sectors, for different parts of the world. So going back to your analogy of the bat signal, yeah, it's not quite like that. And I would not suggest that type of signaling. However, there certainly should be enhanced discussion.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER — please verify: Yeah.
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): And taking advantage of the progress in the humanitarian space over the past 10, 15 years to not only build early warning systems, but integrate anticipatory action and links to anticipatory financing.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right.
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): You know, this has been going on for the past more than 10, 15 years. So now is an opportunity to reflect on the progress that's being made within what we call the anticipatory action community and perhaps identify mechanisms in standard operating procedures within the International Federation of Red Cross and Crescent Movement. We have early action protocols. Are these somehow potentially related to the El Nino impacts you might see? Can we enhance the amount of anticipatory funding that is available? These are certainly questions that are starting to occur, and we should enhance those types of discussions now and in the months ahead.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Because those sorts of questions, what you were just saying there was standard operating procedures, anticipatory thinking, those are all sort of, professionals speak for the fact that it's difficult to predict the future, and we're living in this area of massive uncertainty where you're looking at data, the range of what might happen this year is broad, but it includes these El Nino consequences, and it must be hard as you're living through that, and we'll get to some of the impacts in a minute, someone's got to call it and say, we need to mobilize anticipatory things here, this could happen over there, without having full knowledge of whether or not that's going to happen. So just help us understand sort of how that feels, that relationship between forecasting and decision making, it's hard to do, right?
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): Well, Tom, thank you for flagging that. And yes, a significant part of my job is not only challenging people to improve, you know, how they understand uncertainty, but I think bigger picture, you know, I try to take a step back and encourage a change in the way that organizations are structured and the way that standard operating procedures are developed to embrace uncertainty, you know, change our relationship with uncertainty. Uncertainty is not a bad word. Uncertainty is an awesome concept, you know, which allows us to make statements about the future. This is an important concept that we all should improve our relationship with. Now, particularly in the humanitarian space or disaster management space, the relationship with uncertainty has been improving, let's say. But it's not an easy concept, right? And on the other hand of preparing and ensuring that funds are available to be released based on a forecast, the relationship with having funds stored away must also change. What are the ethical considerations of putting money aside, you know, so that they can be released based on a forecast versus allocating those funds for the many emergencies and humanitarian efforts that are happening now? These are very serious discussions that are happening. However, we must have more of them. More must be done and more funding must be allocated and must be available. Yeah. I remember working in emergency settings, in the Rohingya refugee camp specifically, actually in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazaar. We were tasked to design one of the early warning systems, risk awareness systems for flash floods and landslides, which in Cox's Bazaar, where the Rohingya refugee camps are. I remember back then, well, initially the thought was perhaps we would not be able to find appropriate data. How do we know what data will be available in these things? It was the opposite. There was actually so much data that it took a long time to parse out which were the more or less appropriate data sets. I'm talking about flood maps, I'm talking about risk data, different types of forecast, average across different spatial scales. That integration, that translation of those data is a skill in itself. It cannot be said that we just merge all these products together, and then the average will be the answer. That is an inappropriate way to go about this, because there's different biases within the forecast, different types of uncertainty. So yeah, I mean, as someone that I consider myself privileged to be at the intersection of science, policy and practice, comes enormous responsibility. And we're not training that way within the scientific community to talk about the limitations of our data as much as we should be.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I suppose part of what you're saying there, and I'm sort of slowly cognising the reality of this as we speak, because it's easy to say, El Nino is coming, we should be prepared. But you will act with a level of uncertainty. It'll either be a high level of uncertainty or it'll be a low level of uncertainty, but you're not going to have certainty. And so that level of comfort with doing that and bringing institutions with you to act with uncertainty in order to be prepared is a delicate thing that requires leadership, it requires courage, it requires being wrong occasionally, because that's how it's going to be when we're dealing with uncertainty. How do you think we're doing institutionally, dealing with that sort of thing? Do we have the institutions we need to deal with these escalating risks?
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): I appreciate that question. It was actually a question I was going to ask you. From your experience.
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Paul Dickinson: It doesn't work like that, Andrew. You've got to understand this is a podcast where we're asking you the difficult question.
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): No, I understand. But I'm also keen to hear your reflections from your perspectives. Yeah, it's changing, you know, but I think, I mean, leadership, I think, is a key, what you said resonated with me, maybe not the most, but we need more of that. We need leadership, not only in emphasizing, like, taking action, but justifying why resources were allocated or why actions were taken in some areas versus others. The way I look at it is, let's say this, I admire leaders that talk about taking action, not only from a prioritization perspective, but also from a deprioritization perspective. We have limited resources, right? And we could sit back and say, oh, we use this forecast to pre-position medical equipment in this area, right? Or in the refugee camp, we took this action to prioritize these areas of the refugee camp to improve the water systems. Like, that's one way to look at it. But when we're operating in a world of limited resources, I argue we must also look at the deprioritization, you know? And even if we're taking action, which it's not easy to take, we should acknowledge the effort that goes into justifying taking action. But it is an incomplete representation of the reality, particularly when we're in humanitarian settings and particularly when we're talking about the most underserved populations. So leadership, to me, is acknowledging that spectrum of appropriateness of taking action and being able to say, yes, not only can we talk about how we took action, but we looked at the areas that perhaps we didn't take action in. And we also are confident we made the right decision for various reasons there, too. So that's one aspect that I think a leader has, is being able to unpack those elements, because again, that's the reality.
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Paul Dickinson: Okay, Andrew, so here we go, right? You know, first of all, how limited are we in resources? I mean, there are a lot of people with a lot of billions just kind of piled up. There's more 70 meters yachts being sold, you know, than ever before. I admire people who hang out in refugee camps. So, Andrew, you're kind of my hero, actually. And from the policy perspective, you talked about working with the International Red Cross Red Crescent Society. Clearly, you know, by the time the International Red Cross are involved, the humanitarian crisis is occurring. You know, we're always kind of counting CO2 atoms in this show and, you know, or molecules and, you know, the CH4 and it's all about the emissions. But there's the human beings, you know. How do you think that the science to policy realm is working? Because, I don't want to trivialise this discussion, but so much of contemporary media is really discussing taking over oil, you know, in Venezuela or companies around the world have had to go quiet about the climate transition because they're frightened of being attacked. You know, are we, you know, downstream, you're doing heroic work, I think, connecting with the victims of climate change. But I just wondered, is there a way for that lived experience of human suffering to make its way into a more preventative policy realm?
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): Yes. So, one of my first activities within the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre was to rethink the relationship with preparedness, warning and anticipation. And yeah, historically, the Red Cross, as you said, Red Cross Red Crescent has been a response, not only the Red Cross Red Crescent, the humanitarian sector generally has been focused on response. And there are reasons for that, because there were needs and there still are needs for organizations, particularly neutral organizations, to step in, to respond and to support those that are the most vulnerable and have received the most impact from any type of disaster, geopolitical incident and these things. Now, over the past approximately 15 years, yeah, we are proud of our progress in identifying appropriate forecasts, developing funds so that warnings can be acted on. Like, these are things that should be elevated and discussed further. However, we must also think about one of the most important mandates of the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies, and that is to support the most vulnerable. You know, in the ways we define the most vulnerable, this could change from place to place, but this is the reason why the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement is one of the reasons why the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement is so important in this space, to advocate for the most vulnerable and make sure that in local, national, international policy discussions, the most vulnerable remain present and centered in those discussions. So, my role, perhaps, is not in the design of policy, but brought in to advise on the different scales of impacts, the uncertainty within different forecasts. Lately, we've been talking much more about climate overshoot, for example. So, if we go beyond these certain thresholds, what does the world look like in terms of risks post-peak global mean temperature? This is a new type of discussion in the humanitarian space. Though, yeah, I think that there are aspects that we should be proud of, and we should acknowledge as success. However, there is much more to do. And, as you noted, there are bunds available, right? But unfortunately, in terms of accessible right now in the humanitarian space, they are limited, and becoming more limited.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I think that's a really interesting question that I would love to just ask you to reflect on finally. We know, tragically, that at some point in El Nino, it will manifest and that will result in terrible events that will lead to humanitarian disasters. I mean, that seems to be just, you know, that will happen. We don't know exactly whether it will be this year or next year, but it's coming. And as the planet warms, those events become more and more intense and the human impacts get greater. Obviously, we should prepare as much as we can to minimise that, but that seems to be a reality of our world. And yet, if the last few years are any evidence to go by, those moments will not result in humanity collectively choosing to take a different course for our future, because we've seen these things get worse and worse. And we don't seem to be taking the lesson and making big changes in society. That seems to be something that you could describe as broken, that link between seeing these things happen and being able to make change politically and personally. What's your understanding of someone on the front lines for what's gone wrong there? And is there anything that we can do individually, collectively, to try to actually allow these things to kind of sink deep enough to lead to change?
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): Thank you for asking that question. And it's something that I reflect on if not daily, quite frequently. It makes me think back to one of the reasons why I teach. I am inspired by the next generation. The younger generations are in touch with the environment and the earth in a different way from us. Yeah, I look to them for inspiration. And I tell them that, too. I think that's an important aspect for us as scientists. Another way to reflect on this is, yeah, the changing funding landscape. You know, it is becoming harder for scientists to acquire funding for our research. And that's related to the core atmospheric science research, that we must improve our understanding of warming and the variability of warming and the impacts from that, but also in terms of socioeconomic impacts. You know, we are seeing fewer and fewer opportunities. And we are very resilient. You know, we're still here. You know, we're doing our work. We're doing our job. We're still coming up with research questions and executing the research. Yeah, it's becoming harder, but we're not going away. You know, and I think that persistence and resilience is something that we should normalize talking more about. And the community and networks that we have, we build off each other. You know, we are stronger because of that. So these are some of my initial reactions to the question. Now, trying to take that a bit further, we don't necessarily need like so much more data. This is an important part that I've worked on my experience. If you would ask me as a younger meteorologist, I mean, I was the person watching the weather channel and the radar and very much an extreme weather forecaster, weather nerd as a young kid. And yeah, I would be the person advocating. Of course, we need higher resolution models, you know, and house by house flood risk plots, maps and these sorts of things. But, you know, we must have the systems in place to act on them, right? We must have the logistics in place. We must have the ability to, with confidence, not only take action to decrease impact from a disaster, but ensure that we're focused on the disproportionality of disasters. And that must be one of the metrics that we increasingly use when we claim success from using a new data set or using a new AI forecast product, or these many black box products that are more and more common these days. It's like, is it actually decreasing the impacts on the most vulnerable and most underserved populations? And many times we don't even have the data to assess that question. So that is something that we must enhance in our discussion. And that's something that is relevant in New York City, in refugee camps, in coastal communities in the Pacific. These are questions that we have the responsibility to keep center in not only our science, not only in developing policy, but again, while we're integrating the science into the policy and practice.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Andrew, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you for the work you do and helping the world get ready for these events and manage the uncertainty. And I suspect we will probably be needing to talk to you again as these things unfold. So thanks for joining us and look forward to talk to you again.
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Paul Dickinson: Thank you, Andrew.
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Andrew Kruczkiewicz (guest, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre): Thank you. Thank you for raising awareness and I appreciate the time.
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Paul Dickinson: Great to be with you.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So great to have a chance to talk to Andrew. What a brilliant person he is and I mean, first of all, you know, God's work, right? Him and Red Cross Red Crescent and everyone else who's trying to both respond to these events when they happen. And also this very interesting science of prediction about how do you tell that this is going to happen? What's the likelihood of prediction? Once you know the likelihood, how much do you invest against that possibility? I mean, we're in this sort of new world where there's so many variables and it's so difficult to actually be able to be there to predict these different things. I'm glad that he is and that others are because, of course, some of this stuff is more predictable than we might think. We kind of know when these extreme weather events are going to happen, we know some of the manifestations of it. We can't tell it precisely. We need to work on variables and uncertainty and that's very difficult, but it's very important work. And, you know, the place we began to get to at the end, I think is very interesting. The last El Nino that we had helped to push the world temporarily past one and a half degrees, temperature rise, which is obviously the threshold reference in the Paris Agreement. And this new El Nino forming now, my understanding is this kind of has a 60% chance of development, as we talked about earlier, and this could even turn into a super El Nino, which could lead to some of the global scale disruption events that we've had in previous years. That is heartbreaking. And if there was a silver lining, and I don't know that there is, it should be that this is like a wake-up call for us and we see these things happening, and then that leads to a fundamental change of direction. But what I also see is that when these things do happen, those of us who want these moments to turn into fundamental changes of direction end up somehow losing the narrative war that plays out in the public. It ends up not really hitting in a sustained way in the world's media that this is climate, that it's getting worse, that it's affecting everybody, that we need to change, that we have a limited window. I know those are the moments when the salience of climate is at its highest, and yet somehow, and I don't know, maybe you've got an answer for this.
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Paul Dickinson: No, no, no.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It doesn't capitalize into the thing we want it to capitalize into.
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Paul Dickinson: I haven't got an answer for this. I've got a question for you because actually, I know that you've been doing some work with some groups looking at climate communications. Is there anything that came out of that that could offer some of our listeners tried and tested framings or approaches that you can cut through?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, look, I mean, I don't have an answer and I can reflect on a couple of things. I think that one of the things I've learned is this is all about speed. It's all about how quickly you can get a narrative out and land it. The news cycles move very quickly. Unless we're able to respond within 12 hours, people on the news, truth message out there, flooding social media, then the narrative tends to get captured and taken in a different direction. I mean, the classic example is the wildfires in Los Angeles. There was a very cynical attempt to divert attention away from the conclusion that that was the result of climate change, and we ended up losing the narrative and never getting it back. So part of that is about speed and people being ready to push that message out. One of the reasons why we can sometimes be slow, although there are those in our community who are fast, is sometimes the way the funding works. People don't always get funding to be ready for these moments. They're delivering other programmes. And so when something happens, everyone kind of gets on a call and thinks about what they might do, and then that works into a joint statement. By now, we're four or five days later, and it sort of doesn't work like that. So I think we need a slightly different approach that gears the people who care about telling these narrative messages in a way that can lead to political change and public opinion change. We need a bit of a shift in how we think about that. And I know many people are thinking about that, so I'm sure that we will see that shift, but we do fill a long way behind where we need to be.
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Paul Dickinson: It's finding the cut through, and it is about words. You've heard me endlessly go on about these little snippets of sort of Churchillian prose. And all through Dr. King's arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. There are formulations of words and concepts that touch the human soul and find something else in us. I just can't get over all this massive explosion in yachts that are more than 70 meters long coinciding with a hard-working educational scientist with the Red Cross Red Crescent Society talking about his time in refugee camps and how to try and get the food and the water to the people who otherwise might die. It's just two worlds.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I think the truth is we've never really worked out how to talk about this in a manner that takes it from being somewhere else to someone else at some other time and makes it me now. We've had lots of theories. We've had lots of runs at it. But I think that it never feels that present in people's lives as other things do. I think that we're getting more sophisticated in talking about things that relate to people's lives and how do you, climate will affect health, it will affect affordability, it will affect kids' lives, it will affect the air kids are breathing in schools. We can connect it to things that matter to people. But the great task for humanity is to lift our sights and realize this is happening now to other humans and they've not done a lot to cause it. That potential for that sense of compassion and connection, I know that makes me sound incredibly naive and many of my friends in politics would say, that's an absurd way to think about it. But I still am a bit of a romantic and I imagine there's a moment where that breaks out and that becomes a political force. But what I'm learning at the moment is, the only way we get to any of these things is if we're much, much more strategic about how we communicate it, how we fund the communications and how fast we get those narratives out.
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Paul Dickinson: Let me salute strategic humanity. That was lovely. Thank you, Tom. All right.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I think that's it. Lovely to be with you, Paul. Sad not to have Christiana, but always fun to be home alone. We'll be back next week. Thanks for joining us, everyone. Really appreciate it.
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Paul Dickinson: See you next week. See you then.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Bye.
