THE LONG VIEW

It begins not with a storm, but with a whisper in the Pacific: a slow warming beneath the waves that, over months, rewrites the fate of millions far beyond the ocean’s edge. In 1982–83, as sea surface temperatures climbed, Peru’s anchovy fisheries collapsed, triggering global protein shortages and economic ripples that reached Hong Kong’s markets—yet few connected the dots. Then came 1997–98, one of the strongest El Niños on record, linked not only to $100 billion in global damages but also to measurable declines in life expectancy across East Asia, as air pollution, heat stress, and infectious diseases surged. Now, researchers have unearthed the hidden ledger: every major El Niño event since the 1960s has silently shaved months off lives and siphoned trillions from economies, with impacts compounding across generations. The true pattern isn't just climatic—it's cognitive. We keep treating El Niño as an episodic anomaly, when in fact, it is a mirror held up to our collective fragility, revealing how deeply entwined human health and economic fate are with the rhythm of the sea. As the planet warms, these events grow stronger and more frequent, turning what was once a decadal test into a recurring reckoning. The lesson from six decades of data is clear: the ocean remembers what we choose to forget. —Catherine Ng Wei-Lin Dispatch from Signals S0