Malaysia's palm oil production could fall by 1-3 mn tonnes in 2024 due to El Niño

The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) announced on Thursday (May 25) that the El Niñoweather pattern might reduce crude palm oil production by 1 to 3 million tonnes next year.

El Niñowas unlikely to have an impact on production this year, according to MPOB Director-General Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir, as reported by Reuters.

What could be the toll of an El Niño in 2023?

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Climate experts now predict that an El Ninoweather trend will prevail until the end of this year and the early months of 2024. And they're warning that it might be a powerful one.

If such is the case, the consequences might be substantial. Scientists have previously warned that with growing emissions and a strong El Nio, there is a 66 per centprobability that the globe will breach a critical 1.5°C global warming limit at least once between now and 2027, reported the BBC.However, it may also bring destructive extreme weather, including as heavy rain and floods, to towns in the United States and worldwide during winter.

"We're projecting an above 90 per centprobability that there will be El Niño conditions through the winter," says David DeWitt, director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.

"There's an 80 per centprobability that we're going to be in El Niño in July," he added.

The impacts of this might last for a long time; according to a recent analysis by academics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, an El Nio commencing in 2023 could cost the world economy up to $3.4 trillion (£2.7 trillion) over the next five years. And they claim that after two earlier extremely significant El Nio episodes in 1982-83 and 1997-98, the US GDP was 3 per centlower half a decade later than it would have been otherwise. They projected that if a catastrophe of this size occurred now, it would cost the US economy $699 billion (£565 billion).

However, coastal tropical nations such as Peru and Indonesia had a 10 per centreduction in GDP following the same El Nio episodes, according to the study. They estimate that if climate change increases the frequency and ferocity of El Nio episodes, global economic losses would total $84 trillion (£68 trillion) this century.

"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," saidJustin Mankin, co-author of the study and assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College, who spoke to the BBC.

(With inputs from agencies)

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