150 years ago, a super El Nio killed 50 million people. The next one is right around the corner.
In the past 150 years, humanity has faced a plethora of calamities. The first half of the 20th century was a horror show, with two world wars alone killing upwards of 100 million people and the influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919 killing as many as 50 million others. But before these mass casualties plagued the human race, a comparatively unknown global catastrophe wiped out millions of people in just three years. From 1876 until 1878, a global famine wreaked havoc on Asia, South America, and Africa, cutting short the lives of an estimated 50 million people.
“It was arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity and one of the worst calamities of any sort in at least the last 150 years,” the authors of a 2018 research article in the Journal of Climate wrote in their paper. “In a very real sense, the El Niño and climate events of 1876–78 helped create the global inequalities that would later be characterized as ‘first world’ and ‘third world.’”
Most are familiar with the mechanisms behind the El Niño/La Niña cycle in the Pacific Ocean, known more formally as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Normally, trade winds across the Pacific Ocean move east to west, helping to build up warm waters in the western Pacific. In other years, these trade winds weaken, which causes the usual upwelling of cold water near South America to stop. In North America, this typically means warmer weather in the Northwest and Midwest and flooding conditions in the Southwest and down into Florida. La Niña, as you might expect, is the opposite—trade winds are stronger than usual, pushing more warm water toward Asia and bringing colder, wetter conditions to the northern U.S. and drier, warmer conditions in the American south.
In 1877, the world began experiencing a particularly strong El Niño. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the state recorded its warmest winter on record, with an average temperature of 29 degrees Fahrenheit in the Twin Cities—a record that wasn’t surpassed until 2023 (which was also fueled by a particularly strong El Niño). Across the world, countries experienced severe droughts that instigated devastating famines. But while the strong El Niño event has long been considered the primary culprit, more recent research paints a more nuanced picture. In other words, a lot of bad luck coalesced at just the right time to create a global catastrophe in 1877-78.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/150-years-ago-a-super-el-ni%C3%B1o-killed-50-million-people-the-next-one-is-right-around-the-corner/ar-AA25TbqC
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not as bad as the Tambora eruption of 1815 (which began the "Year Without a Summer"
but still notably bad.