Bengaluru: Nearly 200 ecologists have appealed to fellow researchers and field practitioners to prepare for the potentially “devastating” effects on wildlife and ecosystems they say the upcoming ‘Super’ El Niño will bring. The open appeal urges fellow ecologists to respond by strengthening and expanding research and monitoring efforts to document the impacts of the El Nino so that they can be better understood.Predictions for a ‘super El Niño’The El Niño is one of the three phases of a complex climate phenomenon called the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is caused by fluctuating sea surface temperatures and atmospheric changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean. An El Niño occurs when the tropical Pacific Ocean warms up, and is associated with weak monsoons and reduced rainfall in many regions, including most of South Asia and India. For instance, nearly half of the droughts that occur in the monsoon in India tend to be associated with an El Niño, according to atmospheric scientist Raghu Murtugudde.An El Niño has already set in worldwide, and over India as well. And this one will be particularly intense, several scientists and international organisations have warned. Climate scientist Roxy Mathew Koll had told The Wire in July that with the onset of this El Niño, we are likely to witness one of the hottest years ever recorded in human history. A “strong” El Niño is developing and expected to strengthen during August-October 2026, the World Meteorological Organisation (a body under the United Nations) had warned in July this year. On September 3, the WMO announced that the El Niño is “firmly established” and would intensify into a “very strong event” in the coming months persisting through February next year, “with big impacts on rainfall and temperature patterns and associated risks of floods, drought and extreme heat”.“El Niño is being supersized before our eyes,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres had said, commenting on the predicted scale of the El Niño.India could witness “devastating” impactsThis ‘super’ El Niño will cause a range of “potentially devastating impacts” over the upcoming months, 188 Indian ecologists have warned in a statement, a ‘Call To Action’, on September 16. These include changes in aspects such as the physiology and behaviour of organisms, their life history and evolution, population dynamics and more. Additionally, some areas might witness a change in the communities of species normally found in the region. Such changes could have cascading effects on ecosystems, the Call To Action appeal warns. Even critical ecosystem functions such as nutrient cycling (the process by which organic matter is broken down, and passes through the system again) can be possibly affected. These changes could also affect the people who depend on ecosystems and the services they provide, the ecologists have warned.Also read: El Niño to Cause Surge in Power Demand in India, But Also Decrease Wind and Hydro Power Generation“Ecological systems are closely associated with the human societies that live within and alongside them. Extreme climate is expected to affect a number of interactions in these coupled systems, including resource extraction, human-wildlife interactions, and more. For fishers and agro-pastoralists, extreme heat conditions together with changes in productive regimes could directly influence working days and change patterns of resource dependencies,” their Call To Action read.For tropical forests and trees in India, the coming year will be a “litmus test”, said Jayashree Ratnam, a scientist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences and one of the 188 ecologists signatory to the appeal.“Huge forest trees may appear indestructible, but in the Western Ghats, many of them are already near the limit of the heat they can tolerate. Large trees are especially susceptible to extended droughts. Trees in cities are also vulnerable because of the urban ‘heat island’ effect. It is vital to understand how the coming El Nino will impact trees and other plants – as these are the foundations on which all other life depends,” she said in a statement.‘Strengthen monitoring to document impacts’Ecologists (affiliated to institutes including the Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institute of Science Education and Research among many others) signatory to the Call To Action appeal have urged fellow researchers to strengthen monitoring of wildlife and ecosystems during this time, as there is a an urgent need to document the impacts that the El Niño are likely to bring.Bleached reef. Photo: Wenzel Pinto.These include measuring environmental variables, continuing long-term studies, finding historical data baselines to compare the latest data with, and collaborating with each other for comparisons across geographies. This is important because all types of ecosystems, from forests to deserts, grasslands and coral reefs, will bear the brunt of the upcoming impacts of the El Niño, the scientists have said.“I have witnessed the devastating impacts of El Niños on India’s coral reefs before, and it is heartbreaking,” Rohan Arthur, a marine biologist with the Nature Conservation Foundation, said in a statement. “Coral reefs can be remarkably resilient but they need at least a decade after every major die-back of coral to show significant recovery. The last major El Niño was in 2024, and barely two years after that event, the projected scale and intensity of the heat wave that is currently headed our way is truly scary. We reef scientists have already heeded the call and have formed a coalition to collectively measure the impact of the upcoming El Niño on all of India’s reef regions. I am hoping that this call will spur researchers across India into similar action,” he added.