The 1877 famine parallel
· The South African
The last time an El Niño this strong hit, the death toll was almost unthinkable
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As this year’s El Niño builds toward what could be a record-breaking event, climate scientists keep pointing back to one date: 1877.
What actually happened the last time this happened
The 1877–78 El Niño is considered the strongest ever recorded.
Sea surface temperatures in a key Pacific region soared by as much as 2.8°C above normal.
It struck at the worst possible moment, landing on top of droughts already underway across Asia, Africa, and South America.
The Global Famine of 1876–78 followed.
It killed more than 50 million people, roughly 3-4% of the entire global population at the time.
Peer-reviewed research puts the toll at between 12.2 and 29.3 million deaths in India alone, 19.5 to 30 million in China, and around 2 million in Brazil.
Southern Africa is also named among the regions hit by the underlying drought.
Why this isn’t just an old history lesson
A 2020 study found the 1877-78 event was statistically comparable in strength to the later “Super” El Niños of 1982-83, 1997-98, and 2015-16.
Those are the same three events South Africa’s current forecast is already being measured against.
Researchers stress that modern food systems, monitoring, and grain storage significantly reduce the odds of anything approaching 1877‘s scale today. They’re equally clear the underlying risk hasn’t disappeared, it’s just shifted shape.
This is truly hectic, realising the strongest El Niño ever recorded didn’t just bring bad weather, hey, it changed the course of human history. Worth remembering next time this event gets talked about as “just” a weather pattern.
Does knowing this history change how seriously you take El Niño warnings today?
Let us know in the comments below, Mzansi…