Super El Niño and 15,800 Deaths: India Began Forecasting ENSO Because of Famine. Now It Must Forecast Heat

ENSO in India: From Forecasting Famine to Forecasting Heat Deaths In 1877,

drought and famine across India pushed the colonial government to try to predict the monsoon in advance. Henry Blanford issued tentative forecasts from 1882 to 1885, using Himalayan snowfall as his indicator and the first regular forecast followed on 4 June 1886.

Gilbert Walker, Director General from 1904 to 1924, went further. He looked for pressure patterns across the globe that tended to precede a failed Indian monsoon and found the Southern Oscillation: a see-saw in air pressure between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

He described it formally in 1928. In 1965, Schell linked it directly to El Niño. So India's interest in El Niño began with food. For about 140 years the practical question was whether the rains would fail and the harvest with them.

The Same Signal, a New Question The 2026 Super El Niño is

asking a different question. The Climate Impact Lab estimates 15,800 extra heat-related deaths in India between September 2026 and February 2027, compared with the average for those months over 1996-2025. The monsoon did fail, with a 15% national deficit and larger gaps in the south and east.

But the loss the new estimate highlights is human lives lost to heat, not crops. This is the change to understand. The chain of cause runs through the same teleconnection: eastern Pacific waters more than 3°C above normal change atmospheric circulation and that change shows up over India.

What has changed is the endpoint. Walker's forecasts were meant to protect granaries. The next generation of ENSO forecasts will need to protect people.

Where the 1877 Parallel Breaks Down The comparison with famine has limits and they matter.

• Speed: Famine built up over a season, giving the state months to move grain. A heatwave kills within days and mostly among outdoor workers, the elderly and the urban poor.
• Season: These deaths are projected for September to February, largely outside the summer heat season that India's heat plans were designed for. The heat comes after the monsoon, when people are least prepared.
• Cascades: In 1877 the threat was mainly to food. In 2026, heat also increases electricity demand and nearly 40% of coal plants already report critically low fuel stocks. If power fails, fans and cooling fail too and more people die. There is also a caveat. The lab applies known temperature-mortality relationships across 24,378 regions but does not publish the coefficients. The 15,800 figure is a well-grounded projection, not a count of deaths.

Why "Postcard From Our Future" Matters

The lab says this El Niño brings temperatures that climate change is projected to deliver about 20 years from now. For an aspirant, that phrase links the natural cycle with the long-term trend. ENSO is natural variability, but because it now sits on top of a warmer baseline, each strong event is a preview of the future.

For the exam: India built its ENSO science to forecast hunger. The 2026 event shows it must now also forecast heat deaths. Answers on El Niño that stop at the monsoon miss what this year's event has made clear.