El Niño: The Pacific's long reach and its implications for agriculture

El Niño is a weather phenomenon characterized by the warming of sea temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, a vast water mass that tends to affect the weather globally. The event is currently active according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other weather services and is expected to strengthen, potentially reaching very strong levels by the end of the year. NOAA defines El Niño conditions as a warm anomaly of at least 0.5°C in the Niño 3.4 region (a region in the equatorial Pacific) over a three-month rolling period. In this report, we will look in more detail at the main effects of El Niño on agricultural and animal protein production.