theSIGNAL ENVIRONMENT
13 July 2026
"The climate does not negotiate; it simply presents the bill."
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Environment

"Godzilla" El Niño Threatens Global Food Prices Until 2028

A historically unprecedented Pacific warming cycle is converging with Middle East conflict to deliver a double shock to the world's food supply chains.

In the summer of 1876, an El Niño-driven drought killed more than six million people in India alone. Now, economists are warning that the 2026–27 El Niño — already being described informally as a "super" or "Godzilla" event — could deliver a food-price shock severe enough to last well into 2028, at a moment when households from Lagos to Lima are already struggling with elevated living costs. The warning carries unusual precision. Last month, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed that warming conditions were taking hold across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, and that there was a 63% chance of sea surface temperatures exceeding 2°C above normal before the end of the year.

That threshold matters: analysts at Goldman Sachs have calculated that an event of this magnitude could drive a 15.8% surge in global food commodity prices. The mechanism is well understood — warmer Pacific waters distort rainfall patterns across four continents simultaneously, hitting wheat fields in India, sugar cane in Brazil, and grain harvests across southern Africa. Parts of India have already received only half their normal monsoon rainfall this season.

What makes the current situation especially dangerous, according to economists, is the collision of two separate crises. Iran-related conflict has already pushed world food prices to their highest level in three years, and an extreme El Niño would arrive on top of that existing pressure — what analysts are calling "two shocks at once." UniCredit researchers in Italy have warned that the phenomenon puts "climateflation" back firmly on the agenda, noting that Europe's recent heatwaves show the climate baseline is already shifting before El Niño even peaks. Central banks are paying close attention: a renewed inflation surge could force interest rates to remain elevated far longer than markets currently expect, turning a weather event in the Pacific into a monetary-policy problem felt in every economy on earth.

Photo: Renzo D'souza / Unsplash
Cracked earth in an Indian farming region where monsoon rainfall has fallen to half its normal level.
Discuss
  • What does the 63% NOAA probability figure actually tell us about scientific certainty, and what does it not tell us?
  • Why might central banks raise or maintain high interest rates in response to a weather-driven food price shock?
  • How did colonial rule worsen the famine caused by the 1876–78 El Niño, and what parallels exist in global power structures today?
Science

Alzheimer's protein found to anchor long-term memories

A protein long associated with Alzheimer's disease damage may also be essential for healthy memory formation, according to a new study published in Nature Communications by researchers at Flinders, UNSW, and Macquarie University in Australia. The team found that tau is not required for learning or short-term recall in mice, but without it, memories formed over days or weeks become significantly weaker — a pattern that may help explain why dementia patients can absorb new information yet fail to retain it. Tau appears to act as a molecular organiser, selecting which specialised engram cells are recruited to store a given experience and suppressing background neural noise that could distort the memory trace over time.…
  • If tau shapes which memories last, should dementia research now target healthy tau functions?
Environment

Nigeria's floods leave an invisible wound

On 28 June, floodwater tore through Daniel Ebiesua's home in Shogunle, Lagos in minutes, submerging furniture, documents and his family's identity certificates. He now pays 35,000 naira a day for hotel shelter while a brown waterline still marks his walls. Mental health professionals describe what follows as "ecological grief" — a prolonged psychological burden that disrupts sleep, relationships and daily functioning long after the streets dry out. Dr Faith Aboloje, a Lagos-based trauma expert, reports rising caseloads of climate anxiety in which the sound of rain alone triggers panic.…
  • Should climate mental health support be treated as emergency aid after floods?
"
El Niño puts climateflation back on the agenda, as it amplifies the effects of global warming.
UniCredit Research Analysts, UniCredit Bank
EUROPE · Environment
‘Children were calling for their mummies’: UK pupils struggle in 40C-plus classrooms
AMERICAS · Environment
Pacific gray whales facing ‘catastrophic’ die-off as climate crisis hits food supply
ASIA · Environment
A swarm of stink bugs and a river of rats: why India’s flowering bamboo causes a crisis for humans
AFRICA · Environment
The South African trailblazers seeking to change how wildlife documentaries are made
theSIGNAL IN THE LAB
1VOCABULARY
climateflationecological grief
engram cellssea surface temperaturesmonetary-policy
torrential rainfallmolecular organiser
2GRAMMAR FOCUS
Inversion with negative adverbials
When a sentence begins with a negative or restrictive adverbial (e.g. 'Not only', 'Hardly', 'Never', 'Rarely'), the subject and auxiliary verb are inverted, as in a question: 'Not only did prices rise, but they also stayed high.'
did · had · have · were · could · rarely · never
  1. Not only the 2026–27 El Niño threaten food supplies — it also risked pushing global inflation higher for years.
  2. Hardly NOAA confirmed the warming conditions when analysts began warning of a 15.8% surge in food commodity prices.
  3. Never before two simultaneous shocks — conflict-driven price rises and an extreme El Niño — collided in quite this way.
  4. Not only Nigeria's floods destroying homes, but they were also leaving deep psychological scars on affected communities.
  5. Rarely central banks been forced to consider a Pacific weather event as a direct driver of long-term interest rate decisions.
  6. Hardly the floodwater receded from Daniel Ebiesua's home when he faced daily hotel costs of 35,000 naira.
3PHRASAL VERBS
Match the phrasal verb (1–6) to its correct definition (a–f). All six appear in today's articles.
  1. 1. tore through
  2. 2. taking hold
  3. 3. dry out
  4. 4. arrived on top of
  5. 5. pay close attention
4CRITICAL THINKING
The article describes the mental health consequences of flooding as 'the least-funded dimension of the climate emergency.' Why might governments and international bodies consistently prioritise physical reconstruction over psychological recovery — and what assumptions about suffering does that funding gap reveal?
5CREATIVE · HEADLINES
Write a headline for the top story in each of the following styles. One line each, no explanation:
  • TABLOID NEWSPAPER
  • LUXURY MAGAZINE
  • ACTIVIST BLOG
6WRITING
The tau research shows that a protein previously linked only to disease may also perform a vital healthy function. Using evidence from the article, argue either for or against redirecting a significant share of current Alzheimer's drug research away from eliminating tau and towards preserving its normal role.
7DEGREES OF EXTREMITY
Complete each ladder from mild to strong using words from the articles or related vocabulary.
  • warm→→
  • concern→→
  • rise→→
  • disrupted→→
  • uneasy→→
  • weaker→→
8SPEAKING
  1. Could 'climateflation' become a permanent feature of modern economies?
  2. What responsibilities do wealthier nations have toward flood victims in Lagos?
  3. How reliable is a nickname like 'Godzilla' for describing scientific phenomena?
  4. Can tau research change how we think about memory in healthy brains?