Open any news feed from the past few months, and the disasters arrive in a stream: smoke reaching dangerous levels throughout Canada and flash floods in Ottawa, Montréal and Toronto; heat and drought arriving together on every continent.

Driven by climate change, these events are happening more often, and rather than remaining isolated, they cause cascading, interrelated effects.

Now enter the “super” or even “Godzilla” El Niño developing in the tropical Pacific. This phenomenon changes weather patterns globally, potentially bringing more extreme heat, drought and flooding.

Although it’s a natural climate phenomenon, scientists are concerned about the unprecedented rate of surface warming. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared a greater than 83 per cent probability of strong to very strong El Niño conditions during January to March 2027.

Historical precedents are sobering, with major El Niño events of 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16 leading to extreme flooding in some regions, severe drought in others, and widespread disruption to ecosystems and economies.

Now imagine if hospitals were overrun with respiratory events due to wildfire smoke, migraines, heatstroke and delirium. At the same time, the electricity grid could go down due to overwhelming demand from the use of air conditioning systems.

If that scenario sounds plausible, it’s because every element has already happened in Canada, just not all at once. We call these scenarios polycrises, to represent multiple connected crises occurring simultaneously. We’ve seen these........

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