Feeling the heat

meanwhile, output improves because warmer and wetter weather encourages crop growth.

Munich Re says losses from natural catastrophes last year fell to $ 100 billion, their lowest level since 2009, mainly due to fewer hurricanes affecting North America. This glosses over the impact in poorer regions, which face the most severe events during El Niño.

“El Niño, on average and also visible in the 2015 pattern, hits the poorer areas of the world hardest while richer regions are relatively unscathed,” says Peter Hoeppe, head of geo risks research at the reinsurer.

Companies are moving to insulate themselves from the risks. GrainCorp, an Australian agribusiness, is investing A$30 million to expand in Canada — in part to escape the threat posed by drought in eastern Australia. Fragile ecological environments like the Great Barrier Reef are, however, unlikely to adapt to increasingly severe weather events.

Many scientists believe the deal reached at the Paris climate conference in December, which aims to keep global temperature rises this century well below 2 degrees Centigrade, is inadequate. NASA data released last week shows that January, February and March each recorded their highest ever temperatures.

A change in Australian policy seems unlikely. Last month it approved one of the world’s biggest coal mines even as scientists warned that bleaching linked to climate events threatened to destroy the Great Barrier Reef.

“The Paris plans to curb CO emissions are not remotely adequate to stem catastrophic climate change,” says Mr. Veron. “It’s like Russian roulette. There is nothing at all to stop one El Niño wiping out the Great Barrier Reef in a few months.”

Rotting carcasses of cattle lie strewn across parched, cracked soil. Fields are littered with stunted, worthless maize plants. Dams that provide resources for hydroelectricity, irrigation and drinking water sit at their lowest levels for years.

Such scenes have been playing out across southern Africa as the El Niño weather cycle buffeted fragile economies and heaped pain on a region of nearly 300 million people. In South Africa, the regional power, five out of nine provinces were declared drought disaster areas last year, while the government estimates that the economic cost on agriculture has already hit $1 billion.

A key bread- basket for less developed neighbors — providing about 70% of their maize imports, the main ingredient for staple foods — the effects are being felt across South Africa’s borders. Last year, its maize crop was down by a third to 9.9 million tons. In 2016 it is expected to fall to 7.2 million tons. Annual domestic consumption stands at 10.5 million tons.

Just as South Africa’s commercial farmers are being battered, so too are thousands of small- scale producers across the region. The UN’s World Food Program ( WFP) estimates that 31.6 million people in southern Africa face food shortages. It warned last month that acute malnutrition is increasing in Zimbabwe, southern Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique as