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"A very dangerous situation" is how one of the world's top climate scientists is describing the next six months ahead, following confronting projections about what this year's super-strength El Niño is about to do to the planet.
Approximately 450,000 deaths have been projected globally from the additional heat, over and above the already existing impacts of the climate crisis.
So supercharged is this El Niño that it is expected to bring temperatures consistent with what climate change is projected to bring in 20 years' time.
Victoria University climate scientist Professor James Renwick, who spent two decades involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told RNZ’s Morning Report programme on Thursday that, when it came to global temperatures, a tenth of a degree mattered.
"The estimates for next year are for a global average about 1.7°C above pre-industrial, which is about 0.2°C warmer than present. So… it's like average temperatures will be in about 20 years' time, given the rates of warming we've got at the moment."
While 0.2°C might not sound like much, Renwick said it would result in "bigger, longer, more intense heat waves", for starters - climate change's "biggest killer".
"It's estimated that over 30,000 people will have died in the heat waves and fires this summer in Europe and the UK, so it's well-known that high temperatures are bad news... It's a very dangerous situation."
The report estimates there will be 44% more "extremely hot days" than usual.
Because warmer temperatures keep more moisture in the air, when it rains, it pours. But when conditions turn to drought, they last longer.
"It all becomes harder to deal with," Renwick said.
According to a new analysis from scientists, economists and data engineers at the University of Chicago, an extra nearly 500,000 lives will be lost between El Niño's arrival in June and February next year, with more as the effects linger into the northern hemisphere's summer months in 2027.
And that wasn't taking into account deaths caused by secondary effects such as forest fires.
"It's all about what's called excess mortality," Renwick explained.
"So you have statistics for every country on how many people typically die in a given week of the year. And you can work out, based on temperatures, essentially, how many more people you'd expect to die in a given week or month of the year."
Countries could take action to mitigate the risks, he said, but many did not have the resources - particularly in Niger and other African nations. Other hard-hit countries will include several in Asia such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and India, and tropical Brazil in South America.
"As we often see with climate change, the countries that have the least resources that have probably done the least to contribute to the problem are the ones suffering the biggest consequences."
The researchers behind the report called it a "postcard from the future", writing: "While [the temperatures] feel anomalous now, they will become normal just a few decades into the future. Mortality projections for the near term provide a signal of where we are headed if new adaptation investments do not materialise."
Renwick said during a normal El Niño event, temperatures along the Pacific equator rose up to 2°C - this time they had increased twice that.
"It gets warmer in the eastern Pacific, cooler in the western, and the trade winds drop off. So there's a whole lot of heat in the ocean that's pushed into the atmosphere - basically that's where the heat comes from… and that extra heat in the atmosphere has to be rippled away across the world."
The expected excess mortality was "about 65 times larger than the 6800 people believed to be dead or missing from the recent Nepal flash flood", the report estimated. Nepal's flood, caused by collapsing rock and glacier, has been tentatively linked to climate change.
The local forecast
While El Niño drives up the global temperature average, in New Zealand it tends to produce dry, cool conditions - at least for most of the country.
"A windier than usual spring is in store for much of New Zealand, especially for the South Island and lower and eastern part of the North Island," Earth Sciences NZ's website states.
"At times, strong wind will drive unusually warm weather, with eastern parts of both islands likely to see spikes in high temperatures, which combined with dryness, will result in increased wildfire risk."
In the west and south of the South Island, locals should expect high winds, heavy rain and elevated risks of flooding.
