To read of the great famine that swept the globe in the 1870s is to read of a hellscape worse than your imagination could conjure. In China, India, Brazil and beyond, after years of drought and failed harvests, millions died of starvation. People rioted, begged, stole, murdered for food. They knowingly ate diseased animals, tree roots, mud, pets and strips of leather in desperate bids to stay alive. By many contemporary accounts, cannibalism was rife. Children were sold or sacrificed for a meal. Corpses were bricked into their homes by family members to stop them being pillaged and eaten by hungry neighbours. Bodies littered the roadsides.
The chaos didn鈥檛 stop at just hunger. Those who had fled famine took shelter in filthy camps and shanty towns, which were then struck by deadly outbreaks of cholera, smallpox and other diseases. In China, when winter came and there was no money for fuel, people burned their own houses. The desperate then crowded together in underground pits for warmth. Society all but fell apart. Once the poor had died in a region, the wealthy succumbed.
When the rains finally returned, there was barely anyone left to sow the crops. The total death toll across India, China and Brazil between 1876 and 1879 is estimated at 20 million to 30 million. Globally, there may have been 50 million deaths. As historian Mike Davis writes in the book , this was a disaster of 鈥渢ruly planetary magnitude鈥�.
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The root cause of this catastrophe? A supersized El Ni帽o event, which released vast amounts of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, triggering severe disruption to global weather patterns.
Discovering El Ni帽o
Of course, scientists in 1877 weren鈥檛 aware of the El Ni帽o鈥揝outhern Oscillation cycle. There was rudimentary meteorological data collection under way: sea-surface temperatures were collated, rain gauges were monitored, barometric pressure was observed. Scientists knew something strange was happening to global weather patterns, but the cause was far from clear.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1877/78 El Ni帽o, many researchers were convinced sunspots were to blame. 鈥淎s a scientific topic, this was the Stone Ages for El Ni帽o. No one in the scientific community knew about this problem. The only ones who probably knew about it were Peruvian fishermen,鈥� says at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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It wasn鈥檛 until the 1920s that physicist Gilbert Walker first identified the seesaw of atmospheric pressure across the tropics, known as the Southern Oscillation. Then, in 1969, meteorologist Jacob Bjerknes connected changing sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific to the Southern Oscillation and mapped out the global dynamics of an El Ni帽o. That was the 鈥渂ig bang鈥� for El Ni帽o research, says McPhaden, ushering in the idea that with the right data and equipment, El Ni帽os could be identified in real time 鈥� and even predicted in advance.
Imperial failure
Of course, El Ni帽os had occurred before 1877. Authorities in China and India held grain reserves for when monsoon rains failed. But the 1877/78 El Ni帽o was stronger than anything that had come before. , also at NOAA, and his colleagues have used modern data analysis methods to estimate just how strong it was. The uses sea-surface data from ships, buoys and modern floats, organised to reconstruct a temperature record stretching back to 1850.
鈥淔rom our data reconstruction, we did find the El Ni帽o signature, and it is a very strong El Ni帽o,鈥� he says. The strength of an El Ni帽o is usually measured by how far sea-surface temperatures in a specific region of the tropical Pacific have deviated from normal. In 1877/88, after accounting for the background ocean warming trend observed since then, temperatures in the Nino3 index were 2.88掳C above average, Huang鈥檚 research indicates. This suggests it was among the strongest 鈥� if not the strongest 鈥� event in modern history.
The 1877/78 El Ni帽o resulted in droughts around the world. The situation was most acute in northern China, which suffered its worst drought in 300 years, in north-eastern Brazil, India, South Africa and northern Africa. In some of these locations, drought had begun even before El Ni帽o hit, triggered in part by unusually cool conditions in the tropical Pacific immediately before the arrival of El Ni帽o. The result was three or more years of very little rain, and repeated crop failures.
But the impact of the droughts was made far worse by the ineptitude of governments鈥� official response. In India, colonial rulers continued to collect taxes, hoard grain and enforce food exports to England despite widespread starvation among local populations. In China, corrupt officials raided grain supplies, and poor transport links made it difficult to get food to those who needed it.
Water levels on the Grand Canal, a vital transport link into the hardest hit Shanxi province, dropped so low that it was unnavigable. There were no railways, and the mountain roads into Shanxi thronged with bandits who killed the livestock being used to transport grain before they could reach the starving.
鈥淏ecause of the workings of the imperial economy at that time, those droughts translated into colossal famines with millions of dead in India and China,鈥� says at Columbia University in New York.
The return of a monster
For more than a century, the 1877/78 El Ni帽o has stood as the strongest in history. But this year, a super El Ni帽o has once again erupted in the tropical Pacific, and on current forecasts it looks set to outstrip even 1877/78 in its intensity. Current predictions forecast sea-surface temperatures in the El Ni帽o region of the Pacific Ocean in November.
The big difference this time is that we already know the event is occurring. Scientists have been able to forecast El Ni帽o events months in advance since the 1990s. That affords governments, emergency services, farmers and citizens vital time to prepare by increasing water storage, sowing drought-resistant crops, improving warning systems, restoring flood defences and more. 鈥淏eing forewarned is being forearmed. If you know something is coming and it can have really damaging impacts, you have some choices to make,鈥� says McPhaden.
Models began to hint at a coming El Ni帽o in February 2026, and by April there were clear signs that a strong event was looming. That gave governments a three-month head start before the El Ni帽o even began, and at least six months of warning before impacts would be felt. Improvements in El Ni帽o forecasting, with the help of AI, mean it could soon be possible to predict a coming El Ni帽o two years in advance, says McPhaden. 鈥淭he longer you have to prepare, the more options you have. And the better off you may be in the end,鈥� he says.
But although there are prospects to improve El Ni帽o forecasts even further, it comes at a time when US federal funding for climate research and global aid has been severely curtailed. In January 2025, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order shutting down a US-funded famine early warning system. Six months later it was reinstated, but data reporting since then has been patchy, . The US has also severely cut funding to the World Food Programme, which provides emergency food relief. Other high-income countries, including the UK, have also scaled back their overseas aid budgets in recent years.
Meanwhile, the US war with Iran and blockade in the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up fuel and fertiliser prices, while Russia鈥檚 war in Ukraine has curtailed the global wheat trade. This El Ni帽o 鈥渋s happening at a very bad time鈥�, says Seager.
Nevertheless, early preparation, coupled with a more comprehensive global trading network, better transport links and modern agricultural methods, means the world is much, much better prepared to deal with a monster El Ni帽o than it was 150 years ago. 鈥淲e have much better public health systems,鈥� says McPhaden. 鈥淲e have much better understanding of disease and disease controls. And we have humanitarian organisations, and we have social safety nets, that will not let 50 million people die like happened in 1877-78.鈥�
