Severe El Niños Can Stunt Children's' Growth

Researchers have found startling evidence that a severe El Niño can actually slow the growth of children, stunting their height. This reportedly occurred 17 years ago, when an intense El Niño and its resulting floods were linked to the stunted height of local children in Peru.

That is at least according to a study recently published in the journal Climate Change Responses which detailed how a similar result from severe El Niños is unlikely to occur in developed countries with steady food supplies.

So why is that? First we should established what an El Niño really is. Called an El Niño Southern Oscillation, this cyclical weather event occurs naturally every two to seven years as a product of shifting air and ocean currents. Characterized by uncharacteristically warm waters, these events warm the surface of the Pacific Ocean, flushing away normally nutrient-rich cold waters. This not only harms local sea-life, but also encourages excessive rainfall - a cause of floods along coastal regions.

The last major El Niño that affected Peru, spanning between 1997 and 1998, caused a whopping 16 times more rain than normally seen.

The resulting floods affected the region's tenuous economy, causing a food shortage that had a lasting impact on public health. Despite the fact that past studies indicate the growth rate and max height of Peruvian children in the area has been increasing in past years, this food shortage set things back and denied village children access to the nutrients their bodies had expected.

"The children's height was permanently marked just like tree rings indicate natural disasters," researcher William Checkley of Johns Hopkins University told New Scientist.

In an assessment of the affected children more than a decade later, Checkley and his colleagues found that the El Niño and its flooding has led to the children being an average 0.3 centimeters shorter than they were expected to grow. The most severely affected villages boasted children that were up to four centimeters shorter.

According to the researchers, this is an alarming revelation, as recent studies have revealed that the Pacific ocean is prepping for El Niño events once more. What's more, these might be more severe and frequent than they have been in the past, thanks to the effects of climate change.

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