El Niño and life below water (SDG 14)

By Judah Jones

At MiniMUN, we are always staying up to date with current events and how they affect the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations. One of the major issues that multiple SDGs seek to combat is climate change, a complicated fight that is always shifting due to natural patterns in the environment. One such natural change is the predicted “El Niño” that is set to begin soon.

El Niño is a period of unusually warm weather, created by changes in the patterns of trade winds and movement of warm water in the Pacific Ocean. While El Niño is a natural occurrence that has been documented since the 1600s [1], climate change threatens to turn it into a significantly more catastrophic event. The Earth has already seen record high temperatures during the recent period of La Niña [2], a time of uncharacteristically cold weather, and many scientists fear that rising temperatures in coordination with El Niño could have drastic effects, pushing global temperatures past key tipping points for disaster.

A key area of concern with rising temperatures is the threat to life underwater, the concern of SDG 14. Coral reefs can experience mass “bleaching” events as a result of drastic increases in heat, spitting out algae that live in their tissue and putting them at risk of mass death and starvation [2]. Changes in water patterns during El Niño also hinder a process called “upwelling,” which is key to providing nutrient-rich waters for phytoplankton, a change that can disrupt entire marine ecosystems [1]. Both of these effects are typically naturally corrected events, but scientists fear that rising temperatures may negatively harm ecosystems to a new extent that will be difficult to naturally correct.

Learn more about marine life with MiniMUN’s SDG 14: Life Under Water curriculum, which is currently available for 2nd grade. The 3rd and 4th grade unit plans are coming soon - stay tuned for updates!

Request curriculum here.

[1] NOAA. What are El Niño and La Niña? National Ocean Service website, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html

[2] Laura Paddison and Rachel Ramirez. The oceans just reached their hottest temperature on record as El Niño looms. Here are 6 things to watch for. CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/world/el-nino-forecast-weather-climate-impacts/index.html