The so-called Super El Niño may cause roughly 451,000 additional deaths worldwide by February 2027 compared with a normal year, according to a projection published in September by the Climate Impact Lab at the University of Chicago. Brazil ranks fifth among the most affected countries, with an estimated 13,300 excess deaths. According to CNN Brasil, about 8,000 of those deaths would be concentrated between December and February, when the Southern Hemisphere summer adds its own heat to the phenomenon.

The global ranking is led by Nigeria, with 31,400 projected deaths, followed by Indonesia (19,300), Sudan (17,500) and India (15,800). The news site Metrópoles reports that the African Sahel should add 66,800 deaths and Southeast Asia another 19,400 across the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. For scale, the global total is about 65 times the 6,800 people killed or missing in Nepal's recent flash floods. The study computed the relationship between temperature and mortality across 24,378 regions of the world, comparing forecast temperatures with the 1996 to 2025 average. The figures are projections of excess mortality, not a count of deaths that have already occurred.

El Niño is an abnormal warming of equatorial Pacific waters that shifts rain and heat patterns around the planet. g1 reports that the event is intensifying fast, that days of scorching heat should increase 44% over a normal year and that the peak is expected at the end of 2026. CNN Brasil adds that the global average temperature should run 1.2°C above normal in the coming months. Climate scientist Theodore Keeping of Imperial College London says the phenomenon alters local climate patterns, which affects food production and can determine whether populations face floods or extreme heat stress. "It is a risk multiplier, and we expect to see health impacts around the world," said Teresa Zakaria, head of the risk reduction, humanitarian operations and climate change unit at the World Health Organization. Threats listed by g1 include heat illness, respiratory problems, malnutrition, cholera and mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue.

Brazilian farm country is already feeling it

In Brazil the effects are already concrete. The national weather service Inmet puts the odds above 90% that the event will be classified as very strong between September and November, just as the rainy season begins. In southern Minas Gerais state, one of Brazil's main coffee regions, a hailstorm hit the city of Varginha and its neighbors on September 15, dropping 22.6 millimeters of rain in a single hour. The Association of Rural Unions of Southern Minas (Assul) estimates some 200 farms were hit, with initial losses of at least 50 million reais. Climatologist Ruibran dos Reis, regional director of weather firm Climatempo in Belo Horizonte, says El Niño has been established since mid-May and equatorial Pacific waters are already 2.7 degrees above normal, which he says may have influenced the storm.

Authorities and farm groups are still measuring the damage. The cooperative Cooxupé told Metrópoles Minas that field teams are assessing losses, and a survey by the state farm agency Emater-MG cited in the report shows southern Minas accounted for 66% of climate losses recorded in rain-fed coffee. In July, the farm group Faemg/Senar calculated that only 30% of the coffee harvest had been completed in the region. In Belo Horizonte, the civil defense began training for the 2026/27 rainy season, Metrópoles reports. The scene echoes Keeping's warning: the same erratic rains battering the coffee belt squeeze the food production on which markets and consumers worldwide depend.

Many of the deaths can be prevented

Part of the projected deaths can be avoided with adaptation measures, according to Michael Greenstone, co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab and a professor at the University of Chicago. "This report allows decision makers to see exactly where emergency action can be taken now to save tens of thousands of lives in the coming months," he said. The report lists options such as heat early-warning systems, cooling centers and hydration stations, protection for outdoor workers and stronger health systems.

"For a long time we have been able to predict the impacts of temperatures on crops, and now we can predict the impact of the worst possible scenario: death."

Greenstone said at the report's release, as quoted by Metrópoles. Researchers describe the Super El Niño as a postcard from the future: temperatures expected in the coming months approach levels that global warming would only reach two decades from now. g1 and CNN Brasil place the central projection window between June 2026 and February 2027, while Metrópoles reports the lab extends the calculation over nine months, to mid-2027, and the report itself acknowledges that effects on mortality may continue past the analyzed period, especially in regions that enter summer in the following months.