After three consecutive years of La Niña, El Niño, a natural climate phenomenon, has returned in 2023. According to the NASA Earth Observatory, the phenomenon can have widespread effects, often bringing cooler, wetter conditions to the U.S. Southwest and drought to countries in the western Pacific, such as Indonesia and Australia.

However, hotter and drier weather is likely to increase the price of popular foods such as coffee, cookies and chocolate, which pose a threat to the food market.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, cocoa is a key ingredient in the world's most popular sweet treats, and cocoa prices are currently at their highest in nearly four decades since 1985.

Data by TIME shows that robusta bean production is expected to fall by 5 percent in Brazil, while in Indonesia, the world's second-biggest robusta exporter, output is projected to drop by 20 percent. That, combined with shrinking stockpiles in Vietnam, the largest robusta producer, is likely to keep prices elevated.

An El Niño event, which could bring unusually hot and dry conditions to cocoa tree regions, may affect bean yields. According to an earlier Reuters report, dry weather in most of Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, has damaged the quality of beans and threatened to reduce their size.

According to the research by Lauranne Gateau-Rey, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, El Niño causes extreme weather that negatively affects forests and agriculture. Cocoa plantations can be devastated by drought, and its increasing frequency is likely to cause decreased cocoa yields in the coming decades. Furthermore, because cocoa, like many crops, is grown somewhat beyond its climatic limits, it and other crops could be the "canaries in the coalmine" warning of forthcoming major drought effects on semi-natural and natural vegetation.

What does this mean for chocolate lovers? If El Niño becomes more intense and reduces cocoa yields and quality, consumers may pay higher prices.

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