The "super-charged" El Nino weather system could leave 4.7 million people across the Pacific with widespread hunger, thirst and disease if the global community doesn't urgently act as drought and erratic frosts grip the region.
El Nino weather phenomena are driven by warm sea surface water temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean which, generally speaking, bring drought to eastern Australia, the Pacific and parts of Asia while the Americas receive heavy rains and flooding.
Papua New Guinea is bearing the brunt from the Pacific's El Nino weather pattern, described as the third strongest in the past 50 years, with almost 3 million people facing starvation from crop failures and drought, increasing the risk of disease and dehydration, aid agency Oxfam said in a report released on Monday.
"The warning bells are deafening," Oxfam Australia's humanitarian manager Meg Quartermaine said in a statement, noting that other countries of the Pacific are also experiencing worsening drought. Quartermaine said governments must learn from past mistakes during the 1997-98 El Nino while urging developed countries such as Australia to do more.
"The last major El Nino in 1997-1998 caused widespread loss of life, damage, displacement and disease outbreaks in many parts of the world, and this year's El Nino is expected to be even more severe," Quartermaine said.
Australia's government has already committed 9 million Australian dollars (6.46 million U.S. dollars) to support Papua New Guinea and other countries - 4 million Australian dollars (2. 87 million U.S. dollars) for Somalia - to prepare for and mitigate the effects of El Nino; however much more will be needed.
Central Pacific countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu are likely to see intense rain causing flooding and higher sea levels. It's expected that 40 to 50 million people globally will face hunger, disease and water shortages by early 2016 as drought conditions take hold in parts of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Americas. Australia's weather bureau last week claimed the El Nino weather system, which is likely to be the third strongest event over the past 50 years, is near peak intensity and predicted to persist well into the southern hemisphere autumn though there are signs conditions are easing.
The Southern Oscillation Index, which measures sea level pressure differences, has returned to neutral values in recent weeks while trade winds have also returned to normal ranges, the Bureau of Meteorology said in its El Nino update last Tuesday.
The Oxfam report warns that the odds of future El Nino events have also increased, resulting from climate change, providing a wake up call for the leaders "on the way home from the UN climate conference," Quartermaine said.
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