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El Niño Will Supercharge Shocks Like the Iran War
By Tom Ellison
This article was originally published in Lawfare.
The Iran war has sparked generational shocks to global energy and food security. As the effects of these shocks—from fuel shortages to food price spikes—become increasingly apparent, they will strain peace and stability worldwide. Some of these impacts are already unavoidable, with disruptions intensifying if the conflict persists. But independent of U.S. actions in the region, the coming of a hotter, more dangerous weather pattern known as El Niño is set to exacerbate the food and energy security fallout of Iran—reminding us that Mother Nature gets a vote on our priorities, too, and that climate resilience is inseparable from global security goals.
As world leaders talked geopolitics at February’s Munich Security Conference and returned home to March’s Iran conflict, scientists started forecasting that Earth is starting to transition from its current La Niña phase, entering an El Niño phase as soon as June. During El Niño, warm waters shift east in the Pacific, raising global temperatures and intensifying extreme storms, precipitation, and droughts in many parts of the world. The most recent warm cycle in 2023-2024 gave us the hottest year ever recorded, briefly breaching the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark, and fueled record-breaking drought, floods, and other disasters around the world. Even with La Niña sanding off climate change’s sharpest edges, 2025 temperatures were 1.4 degrees above preindustrial levels and the third hottest year ever recorded, with today’s cool periods regularly hotter than the warmest periods of history. This was described as “a breaking point” and forced militaries to deploy more than 150 times around the world for climate disasters.
The next El Niño is likely to intensify warming to even greater highs in 2026-2027, with a growing probability of an especially warm “Super” El Niño. A climate change-fueled El Niño will amplify the global shocks of the Iran war, many of which will unfold over the coming year even in the unlikely case that risk of renewed conflict resolves soon.
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New Analysis of Climate Security Risks in Iran and Türkiye
By Elsa Barron, Tom Ellison, Brigitte Hugh
This week, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) and the Woodwell Climate Research Center released two interactive story maps on climate security risks in Iran and Türkiye.
As extreme weather this summer shows, no place is immune from climate change’s impact on the interconnected natural and human systems that underpin stability and security. Iran and Türkiye are two geopolitically critical countries that, despite not being among the very most vulnerable states, face serious climate risks that are likely to fuel insecurity and shape foreign policy. Just this summer, Iran experienced worsening water scarcity and an extreme heatwave that forced a two-day nationwide shutdown for fear of blackouts and protests. Türkiye faced dwindling reservoirs and severe flooding in Istanbul amid lethal wildfires that prompted the closing of the Dardanelles Strait, which connects the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea.
In these reports, CCS and Woodwell combine projections of climate trends, security analysis, and country expertise to convey how climate change is likely to fuel security challenges in both countries and what it means for the United States. The Iran analysis explores how climate change, poor governance, and international isolation are decimating agricultural livelihoods and exacerbating water insecurity–fueling repression and generating tensions with Türkiye, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Gulf States. Meanwhile, Türkiye faces worsening water shortages and wildfires that are likely to amplify domestic political tensions, exacerbate mistreatment of refugees, and fuel disputes with downstream countries over the shared Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
These publications continue a partnership between CCS and Woodwell to jointly create analysis on the nexus of climate change and security in key locations. This partnership combines sophisticated science, policy-relevant security analysis, and compelling presentation to identify and communicate climate-related security risks. Previous case studies examined climate security challenges involving nuclear-armed states, and focused on the Arctic, China-India border region, and North Korea.
Explore all five of these reports and future work under our “Climate Risks: Fusing Security, Science, and Storytelling” line of effort.
“Is Climate Change the Biggest Security Threat?” Is Still A Bad Question
World Map, showing Failed States according to the “Failed States Index 2013” (by Ithinkhelikesit)
What is the biggest national security threat? Is climate change the biggest national security threat? We, and the current U.S. presidential candidates, get these questions quite a bit. They are not good questions. These questions confuse the nature of today’s security threats, and more specifically, obscure the complex way in which climate change affects the broader security landscape. Climate change is not an exogenous threat, hermetically sealed from other risks. It is, as the CNA Corporation first stated in 2007, a “threat multiplier.” The impacts of climate change interact with other factors to make existing security risks – whether it’s state fragility in the Middle East, or territorial disputes in the South China Sea – worse. (more…)
Thomas Friedman Cites the Center for Climate and Security on Extreme Weather in the Middle East and South Asia
Iraqis displaced by conflict collect water at al-Takia refugee camp in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, July 30, 2015. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed)
New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman published an Op-ed today, “The World’s Hot Spot,” about the extreme heat waves plaguing the Middle East and South Asia, including Iran (citing AccuWeather’s Anthony Sagliani who stated that a July 31 reading in the Iranian city of Bandar Mahshahr was ‘…one of the most incredible temperature observations I have ever seen, and it is one of the most extreme readings ever in the world.’) The column explores political protests and sweeping changes in government, particularly in Iraq, which followed from the perceived inadequate response to the heat wave, and asks questions about whether or not enough attention is being paid to climatic events by the region’s political leaders.
Friedman cited the Center for Climate and Security’s Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, regarding how climate stresses are measured against other security risks, as well as how such extreme events can place significant strains on the social contract between governments and their respective publics. The full citation: (more…)