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The current El Niño episode, often described as a "super El Niño," raises concerns about the potential impact of this phenomenon on global temperatures and related health impacts. A new study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) has examined the relationship between this climate phenomenon and temperature-related mortality worldwide. The study, published in Nature Medicine, estimates that very strong El Niño episodes are associated with 107,035 additional heat-related deaths and 112,681 fewer cold-related deaths per year compared with neutral conditions.

El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a natural climate phenomenon in the tropical Pacific, which has two opposite phases: a warm phase (El Niño) and a cool phase (La Niña). During El Niño, surface waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific warm unusually for several months, altering global atmospheric circulation. The release of ocean heat into the atmosphere causes an increase in global temperatures, especially in tropical countries, modifying patterns of heat- and cold-related mortality differently across seasons and parts of the world.

The research combines climate and mortality data with statistical models to investigate the relationship between ENSO and heat- and cold-related deaths during 1980–2023, a period that includes particularly intense episodes, such as those of 1982–1983, 1997–1998 and 2015–2016.

The research team used mortality records from 1,667 regions in 125 countries, and used state-of-the-art techniques to extrapolate epidemiological associations between temperature and mortality for a total of 3,331 regions in 189 countries, representing more than 8 billion people.

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