Why Super El Niño is a wake-up call for communities to adapt to climate chaos
And how this would help silent majorities see themselves
By Jadzia Tedeschi
In the Pacific, global emissions are cooking up a storm.
Some of you may have heard that El Niño is forming half way around the world. But its impacts will reach most of the planet. Because of this, 2027 is likely to be the hottest year on record, bringing extreme heatwaves and flooding throughout.1
Something we don’t say enough is: while we’ve been feeling the rumblings of human-caused climate change, the real chaos hasn’t started yet. We’ve only just crossed the tipping point. What comes next will be of a different order.
Super El Niño impacts: on the weather, on supermarket shelves
This would be a taster of things to come. Extreme heat would threaten people’s homes and lives. Food production — already disrupted by instability around the Strait of Hormuz — would face further pressure as chaotic weather damages crops, drives up costs across the global supply chain, and increases the number of people going hungry. This isn’t abstract. It shows up in our supermarkets, in dangerous levels of heat and flooding.
Even if it doesn’t come this time, we still need to prepare
Super El Niño isn’t a certainty yet — current estimates put the likelihood at over two in three. But here’s a way to think about it: imagine you were told there was a one in four chance — or even a one in eight chance — of a catastrophe hitting your town this year. Would you shrug and hope for the best? We don’t accept those odds for other serious risks. We buy insurance. We fit smoke alarms. We plan evacuation routes. Climate preparedness deserves exactly the same logic, and the window to act sensibly is right now, before an emergency forces our hand.2
And even if this particular weather event doesn’t materialise, it sits within a pattern that a majority of climate scientists have been predicting for years. Now that we’ve crossed 1.5°C of warming, erratic weather and its knock-on effects on infrastructure, food, water and transport aren’t occasional surprises — they’re the new normal. The question is no longer whether to prepare, but how soon.
From news to strategy: what El Niño tells us about the bigger picture
Super El Niño means it’s time to adapt
The sooner communities in the UK and across the world honestly assess the risks they face and invest in making each other safer, the more harm we can prevent. And it’s worth being clear about what adaptation actually means. It isn’t just flood defences and better insulation, though those matter. It’s also about the kind of community where people know each other’s names, check in on children and elderly neighbours during a heatwave, and can organise quickly when something goes wrong. Places where there is real trust are far more resilient in any emergency. For inspiration, see our partners at the Inner Climate Response Alliance and Community Bridgebuilders.
(Interested in bringing this program to your community? Get in touch with Neil here).
Adaptation makes people feel they are part of an effort that actually makes a difference
So far, climate communication has focused almost entirely on cutting emissions. Necessary as that is, it leaves most people without a way to make sense of what’s happening around them now, or anything they can personally do about it. For a lot of people, climate feels like something happening at a scale they can’t touch.
Adaptation changes that. People can act on their own futures, in their own homes, now — protecting local services, restoring nature, looking out for neighbours. Agency at the community scale can be transformative: local enough to feel real, but shared widely enough to matter. Unlike global decarbonisation, it doesn’t require waiting for international agreements or national policy to catch up.3
Most people are concerned about climate chaos but don’t feel they can join a movement large and serious enough to make a difference. Basic motivational psychology tells us that if people felt they could take meaningful action, they would be far more likely to engage rather than look away.
Some might worry that focusing on adaptation lets people off the hook — that if we feel prepared, we lose the urgency to cut emissions. But the evidence, and the logic, points the other way. Preparing for the consequences of climate change forces you to confront its reality. It doesn’t reduce the demand for mitigation – it deepens it.
Why adaptation helps the silent climate majority see itself
This is why adaptation is a lever for the silent majority to see itself. When communities come together to make each other safer, people discover they are not alone with their climate concerns. And in finding each other, they begin to realise how many of them there are — building the kind of citizens’ demand that drives broader political and policy change too.4
And why a self-aware climate majority would push for mitigation too
By directly addressing the needs of local populations, adaptation initiatives create a bridge into action for those who don’t see themselves as activists. They also underline the relevance of climate response to lower-income communities, strengthening social fabric through real-world action. Psychologically, people are more likely to deny difficult climate realities when they feel powerless. But meaningful, local adaptation offers people who don’t feel they matter on a global scale a way back in — and that involvement tends to deepen, rather than limit, their acceptance of the bigger picture.
Communities grappling honestly with adaptation will soon see that worldwide decarbonisation is necessary to avoid disasters like the breakdown of Atlantic currents.5
Preparing for climate impacts in our communities may, in the end, be the most effective path to preventing further warming too.
King, S. (2026, May 14). Warning of record global temperatures as chance of very strong El Niño grows. BBC Weather.
Read, R., & O’Riordan, T. (2017). The Precautionary Principle Under Fire. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 59(5), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2017.1350005
Read, R., Bell, R., & Kavanagh, L. (2025). Strategic Adaptation for Emergency Resilience. Climate Majority Project.
Kavanagh, L. (2026). Mobilising Silent Majorities. Climate Majority Project.
So well put and accessible - makes it sound so obvious and doable - if we include the psychology about defenses aswell it helps us understand why some people aren’t taking steps for adaptation yet! Great work 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻