The High Cost of an El Niño in 2023

A study published by Assistant Professor of Geography Justin Mankin and PhD graduate Christopher Callahan this May has gained attention in the media.

According to the BBC, climate scientists are now warning there is now a 90% chance of an El Niño weather pattern occuring at the end of 2023 and into 2024. Mankin and Callahan's study discusses the economic impacts of El Niño, predicting that it could cost the global economy upwards of $3.4 trillion within the next five years, and could cost the United States around $699 billion alone.

As written in BBC:

"'El Niño is not simply a shock from which an economy immediately recovers. Our study shows that economic productivity in the wake of El Niño is depressed for a much longer time than simply the year after the event,' says Justin Mankin, co-author of the study and assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College.

'When we talk about an El Niño here in the United States, it means that the types of impacts that we'll see, floods and landslides, aren't typically insured against by most households and businesses,' says Mankin. In California, for example, 98% of homeowners don't have flood insurance. 

Other economic impacts in the US could include infrastructure damage from flooding, which would lead to supply chain disruption, and poor harvests caused by floods or drought, says Mankin."

Read the full article from BBC here.