Climate change is rewriting the boundaries between human spaces and snake habitats. Kerala’s deadly summer of 2026 is the latest — and most visible — chapter in a global crisis hiding in plain sight.

By Dipin Damodharan & Lakshmi Narayanan

The pencil drawing of a crowned king is still on the wall. It sits low — only as high as a small boy could reach. Dikshal was eight years old when he drew it, and eight years old when he died, bitten by a cobra that had slipped into his home in Chirayinkeezhu, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, seeking refuge from the punishing April heat. The snake was found later, hiding beneath a sewing machine.

His family had heard about the snakebite deaths spreading across Kerala. They had covered the gaps in their walls with sheets, reasoning that the heat inside would keep snakes away. They had never seen a venomous snake near their home before. When Dikshal woke complaining of a wound, his father Dileep could not make out the bite mark — there was only one puncture, not the two most people expect. The family rushed him to the nearest taluk hospital. Staff, uncertain whether it was a snakebite, did not administer anti-venom. By the time Dikshal reached the Medical College Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, he had stopped breathing.

He was not alone. On April 18, eight-year-old Aljo from Kodakara in Thrissur district died after being bitten by a common krait while asleep. His brother Anoj was also bitten and remained in treatment. Within days, Kerala had recorded around five snakebite deaths in a single week, prompting widespread alarm. The answer to where all these snakes had suddenly come from, scientists and field workers say, is not sudden at all. Kerala lost 660 people to snakebites over the last decade.

The Physics of a Cold-Blooded Crisis

Snakes are ectotherms — cold-blooded creatures whose body temperature, metabolism, and behaviour are governed entirely by their external environment. Mithun A.S., an experienced snake rescuer who has worked across Kerala, explains it plainly: snakes depend entirely on external sources to maintain their body temperature. When the environment becomes too hot to sustain them, they do not adapt. They move.

“When temperatures cross a threshold, their metabolism accelerates, their need for food increases, and their natural burrows become unbearably hot,” Mithun says. “They have no choice but to come out and find somewhere cooler.”

In a Kerala summer that has broken decade-long heat records, that somewhere is increasingly inside our homes. As cold-blooded animals, snakes cannot regulate their body temperature or sweat, so they come out in search of cooler conditions. This is also the breeding season, which increases the likelihood of human-snake encounters.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous, Mithun notes, is the combination of heat and hunger. As metabolism speeds up, snakes need to feed more frequently. They are not only seeking cool shelter — they are also actively hunting. The two imperatives together drive them deeper into human territory than they would ordinarily venture.

The Microclimate We Built for Them

Krishnan T.J., a SARPA volunteer and snake expert with years of field experience across Kerala, has a precise term for what is happening to our homes. They have become microclimates — islands of thermal relief in an increasingly hostile landscape.

“Our bathrooms, our wells, our shaded corners — these are now the coolest places available to a snake within range,” Krishnan says. “The water sources outside are drying up. The burrows are overheating. The snake is not invading. It is surviving.”

The ecological concept behind this observation is microhabitat compression — as climate change narrows the zones where temperature, moisture, and shelter align, both humans and wildlife converge on the same shrinking refuges. In Kerala’s case, that refuge is often a tiled bathroom floor, the space beneath a bed, or the cool shadow of a sewing machine.

Krishnan points to the role of ornamental plants that climb walls, cracks in compound walls, and gaps in roofing as the entry points snakes most commonly exploit. “People grow decorative creepers along their walls and think nothing of it,” he says. “For a snake, that is a ladder.” The physical infrastructure of the Kerala home — designed for ventilation and shade in a warm climate — has inadvertently become optimal snake habitat.

Breeding Season and the Invisible Danger

Muhammed Anwar, nodal officer for Mission SARPA under Kerala’s Forest Department, adds a dimension that makes the current moment even more acute. April and May are not just the hottest months in Kerala — they are also when the Big Four venomous species hatch.

“The cobra, the krait, the Russell’s viper — this is their breeding season,” Anwar explains. “The hatchlings carry venom as potent as the adults. They are smaller and harder to see. And they are looking for exactly the same cool, damp spaces that the adults are.”

This convergence — record heat, accelerated snake activity, and a new generation of venomous juveniles dispersing across the landscape — is what transformed April 2026 into something beyond a seasonal spike. Anwar is particularly concerned about the structural features of Kerala homes that create easy access. “Ornamental plants climbing walls, gaps in compound walls, cracks where pipes enter — these are the highways,” he says. “And once inside, a snake will settle in the coolest spot it can find. That is often exactly where a child sleeps.”

Anwar has been at the centre of Kerala’s effort to reduce snakebite deaths since the SARPA programme launched in 2020. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has stated the programme’s goal as bringing snakebite deaths in the state to zero. The infrastructure — over 1,200 trained rescuers, a public app, and rapid response protocols— is among the most developed in India. But Anwar is candid about the limits of even the best response system when the underlying environmental conditions keep worsening.

India’s Hidden Epidemic

What is unfolding in Kerala is a concentrated, visible expression of something far larger across the subcontinent. India had an estimated 1.2 million snakebite deaths between 2000 and 2019 — an average of 58,000 per year. Over a quarter of those deaths were children under 15. Most occurred at home, in rural areas.

India accounts for approximately half of all snakebite-related deaths globally. Every year, an estimated 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes, resulting in as many as 138,000 deaths and three times as many cases of permanent disability. The World Health Organization classified snakebite as a neglected tropical disease in 2017, with a target to halve deaths by 2030. That target now looks increasingly difficult to meet — not because medicine has failed to advance, but because the climate is accelerating the problem faster than health systems can absorb it.

A landmark study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases in 2025, conducted by Indian and South Korean scientists, modelled the future distribution of India’s Big Four venomous species under climate change scenarios through 2080. Climate change is anticipated to significantly impact the distribution of snakes, leading to notable shifts in their habitats towards human-dominated landscapes. Under future scenarios, many northern and northeastern states — including parts of Assam, Manipur, and Rajasthan — are projected to show dramatically increased snakebite risk, in regions that currently have minimal suitable snake habitat. The snakebite map of India is being redrawn.

Did You Know? Kerala lost 660 people to snakebites over the last decade. India as a whole records between 46,000 and 58,000 snakebite deaths every year — more than any other country in the world, and roughly half the global total. The WHO has set a target to halve global snakebite deaths by 2030. Climate scientists say rising temperatures will make that target significantly harder to achieve unless the environmental drivers are addressed alongside the medical ones.

A 2025 cross-sectional survey published in Nature Communications found that nearly half of snakebite deaths in India occur outside hospital settings, falling overwhelmingly on rural, low-income households. Dikshal’s father told reporters the family had no safe place to sleep. Kerala declared itself free of extreme poverty in November 2025. The distance between that declaration and a child dying on a floor because his family could not afford a bed illustrates precisely how climate risk compounds existing vulnerability — not abstractly, but fatally.

A Global Pattern

The Kerala deaths of April 2026 are not anomalous. They are, in the language of climate science, a signal. Research published in The Lancet Planetary Health has established a direct correlation between rising temperatures and snakebite incidence. An Oxford University study projects that by 2050, 41% of the global population will be exposed to extreme heat events — with South Asia absorbing the largest share. Similar patterns of snakes moving into urban and peri-urban spaces have been documented in Australia and across sub-Saharan Africa as temperatures rise. According to a Climate Central analysis, in 47 countries, every single day of what scientists classify as “risky heat” was attributable to climate change.

The communities most exposed are precisely those least equipped to respond: rural households with limited access to antivenom, local hospitals uncertain about diagnosis, and families who cannot afford the beds and mosquito nets that would keep a sleeping child above the floor.

The Ecological Argument

There is a dimension of this crisis that public health conversations consistently underweight. Snakes are not the enemy. As Krishnan T.J. puts it: “The snake did not choose to come into your home. Your home became the safest place in its world.”

Snakes play a crucial ecological role by controlling populations of rats and rodents, which spread diseases like leptospirosis and plague and damage crops. The panic-driven killing of non-venomous species disrupts the very ecological balance that keeps those populations in check. Mithun A.S. has watched this cycle play out repeatedly. “Every summer, people kill dozens of harmless snakes out of fear. The rats multiply. The crops suffer. And the venomous snakes, the ones people are actually afraid of, keep coming — because the food is there.”

The WHO’s classification of snakebite as a neglected tropical disease recognised the medical emergency. What remains underrecognised is its ecological dimension — that snakebite mortality is, at least in part, a symptom of ecosystem breakdown driven by rising heat.

What Must Change

Muhammed Anwar’s immediate guidance is practical: maintain clean surroundings, remove woodpiles and debris from around homes, seal wall cracks and pipe gaps, trim ornamental climbing plants, use torches at night, sleep on raised beds with nets properly secured. If a snake is spotted, do not attempt to catch or kill it — call SARPA. If bitten, follow the Do it RIGHT protocol: Reassure, Immobilise, Go to Hospital, Tell the Doctor. Do not waste time on traditional remedies. The first hour is the only variable that can be controlled once a bite has occurred.

But beyond the immediate, Anwar, Krishnan, and Mithun all point to the same deeper truth: the precautions help at the margins. They do not address the driver.

As long as temperatures continue to rise — compressing the thermal refuges available to both humans and reptiles, pushing snakes into spaces that used to be ours alone — the encounters will multiply. Kerala’s SARPA programme is one of the most sophisticated snakebite response systems in India. It cannot outrun the climate.

The snakes entering Kerala’s bedrooms and hiding beneath its sewing machines are not acting out of aggression. They are doing what every living creature does when its habitat becomes uninhabitable. They are looking for somewhere cooler to survive.

So, increasingly, are we.

Climate models converge on a familiar disruption—with new uncertainties

A subtle but consequential shift is unfolding across the tropical Pacific. After months of relative calm, ocean surface temperatures are climbing again—an early signal that El Niño may return by mid-2026, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

The agency’s latest seasonal outlook suggests that the climate system is moving decisively away from neutral conditions. By the May–July window, models indicate a strong likelihood of El Niño forming, with further intensification possible as the year progresses.

“Climate models are now strongly aligned,” says Wilfran Moufouma Okia, pointing to growing confidence in forecasts that, just months ago, remained uncertain.

The quiet power of ENSO

At the centre of this shift lies the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—a vast, coupled ocean-atmosphere system that acts as one of Earth’s most powerful climate regulators. Its warm phase, El Niño, is defined by elevated sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.

Though cyclical, ENSO is far from predictable. Events typically emerge every two to seven years, lasting up to a year. Yet each iteration differs in intensity, spatial structure and downstream effects.

This variability is precisely what makes ENSO both scientifically fascinating and societally critical.

El Niño: A world tilted toward warmth

If El Niño does take hold, it will arrive in a climate system already primed for heat. The WMO projects a near-global prevalence of above-average land temperatures in the coming season, with especially strong signals across parts of North America, Europe and northern Africa.

El Niño tends to nudge global temperatures upward by releasing heat stored in the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere. When layered onto long-term warming driven by greenhouse gases, the effect can be pronounced—as seen in 2024, which set new global temperature records.

Still, scientists are careful not to overstate the connection. Climate change has not been shown to increase the frequency of El Niño events. What it does appear to do is amplify their consequences—intensifying rainfall extremes, droughts and heatwaves in a warmer, more moisture-laden atmosphere.

Rainfall rearranged

El Niño’s influence extends well beyond temperature. It reorganises atmospheric circulation, shifting rainfall belts and storm tracks across continents.

Historically, El Niño years bring:

• Wetter conditions in parts of South America, East Africa and the southern United States
• Drier conditions across Australia, Indonesia and sections of South Asia

At the same time, the Pacific hurricane season often becomes more active, while the Atlantic basin tends to quieten.

Yet these are tendencies, not guarantees. Each event unfolds with its own geographical signature.

The forecasting challenge

Despite improving models, predicting ENSO remains notoriously difficult—particularly during the Northern Hemisphere spring. This period, known as the “spring predictability barrier,” is when forecasts are most prone to error.

“It is a transitional time for the climate system,” Okia explains. “Confidence improves after April, as the signal becomes clearer.”

For now, projections suggest that the developing El Niño could be moderate to strong, though the full trajectory will only become apparent in the months ahead.

Why it matters now

For policymakers, farmers and disaster planners, the implications are immediate. ENSO forecasts inform decisions on crop cycles, water storage, and emergency preparedness months in advance.

But there is a broader scientific significance, too. Each El Niño event offers a natural experiment—an opportunity to observe how a warming world responds to one of its most powerful internal oscillations.

If 2026 does usher in another El Niño, it will not simply be a repeat of past events. It will be a test of how climate variability and climate change now interact in real time.

And increasingly, those two forces are no longer easy to separate.

When the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted in 2026, a return to coal seemed inevitable. Instead, renewable energy filled the gap—revealing a deeper shift in how the world responds to energy crises.

When the Strait of Hormuz was blocked in early 2026, the world braced for an energy crisis. The narrow waterway is one of the most critical routes for global fuel transport, carrying nearly 19% of the world’s liquefied natural gas. As shipments were disrupted, a familiar expectation took hold: countries would fall back on coal.

That assumption was rooted in history. In previous crises, when gas supplies became uncertain or expensive, coal often filled the gap. This time, many expected the same pattern to repeat.

But it didn’t.

According to an analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), global fossil fuel power generation fell by around 1% in March 2026 compared to the previous year. Gas-fired power dropped more sharply, by 4%, while coal generation remained largely flat.

Hormuz Crisis and Clean Energy Shift

The CREA analysis, which draws on near-real-time electricity data covering major power markets including China, the United States, the European Union, and India, represents around 87% of global coal power and over 60% of gas power. In the context of a global disruption, even a modest decline signals something more structural: the expected “return to coal” did not materialise.

The explanation lies in a shift that has been building quietly over the past decade—the rapid expansion of renewable energy.

In March 2026, increases in solar and wind played a decisive role in offsetting the drop in fossil fuels. Solar generation rose by 14%, while wind increased by 8%, with hydropower also contributing modest gains. Together, these sources absorbed the shortfall without pushing systems back toward coal.

“The record growth in global clean power generation, particularly solar and wind, has helped ease the impact of the latest fossil fuel crisis,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, Lead Analyst at CREA. “The increase in clean electricity offset the fall in gas-fired power generation following the Hormuz blockade, preventing a jump in coal-fired power generation.”

Outside China, coal-fired generation fell by 3.5%, while gas declined by 4%. Major economies—including the United States, India, the European Union, Turkey, and South Africa—recorded reductions in coal-based electricity. This directly challenges the long-standing assumption that fossil fuels serve as the default backup during crises.

The scale of renewable growth helps explain why.

In 2025 alone, the world added roughly 510 gigawatts of solar capacity and 160 gigawatts of wind. These additions are expected to generate about 1,100 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. By comparison, all the natural gas transported through the Strait of Hormuz in 2025 could produce around 590 terawatt-hours—roughly equivalent to France’s total power generation.

In effect, the renewable capacity added in a single year now produces nearly twice the electricity linked to one of the world’s most strategic fossil fuel routes. The implications are structural, not temporary.

Further evidence comes from coal transport. Seaborne coal shipments fell by 3% in March 2026, reaching their lowest levels since 2021. China and India, the world’s largest coal importers, saw a 9% drop in shipments, while countries such as Turkey and Vietnam also recorded declines.

Coal did not step in to fill the gap, in part because it could not. In many markets, coal plants were already operating near their maximum capacity. With coal already heavily utilised—often because it had been cheaper than gas—there was limited room to increase output further.

Gas, by contrast, typically serves as a flexible buffer in power systems. When gas supplies were disrupted, that flexibility was constrained. Renewable energy, rather than coal, filled the resulting gap.

At the same time, rising fossil fuel prices have strengthened the economic case for clean energy, discouraging new investment in coal.

This pattern has precedent. When Russia reduced gas exports to Europe, there were similar fears of a coal resurgence. While coal use rose briefly, the longer-term response was an acceleration of renewable deployment, leading to a sustained decline in emissions. The Hormuz disruption appears to be reinforcing that trajectory rather than reversing it.

At the country level, the trend is largely consistent. The most significant declines in coal power generation were recorded in the United States, India, South Africa, Turkey, Germany, and the Netherlands. In many cases, the expansion of solar power was the primary driver, supported by improvements in hydropower and nuclear generation.

There were exceptions. Japan and South Korea saw increases in coal use due to weaker nuclear output, while parts of coastal China temporarily shifted from gas to coal amid high gas prices. Even so, overall coal generation in China remained below 2024 levels, underscoring the broader direction of change.

The crisis has also triggered policy responses aligned with long-term transition goals. France is accelerating electrification across key sectors. Egypt plans to add 2,500 megawatts of renewable capacity. India has announced annual bids for 50 gigawatts of renewable energy. Indonesia is pursuing a 100-gigawatt solar vision, while Turkey has pledged $80 billion in renewable investments by 2035. Vietnam, meanwhile, is planning to phase out coal-fired plants in new energy projects after 2030.

These moves suggest that the response to disruption is not a return to older systems, but a faster shift toward new ones. The findings from CREA point to a deeper transition already underway—one in which clean energy is no longer supplementary, but central to energy security.

For decades, fossil fuels were seen as the backbone of energy security—reliable, scalable, and indispensable during crises. That assumption is now being tested. Renewable energy is increasingly demonstrating its ability to stabilise supply during periods of disruption.

The idea of a “coal comeback” may have made for compelling headlines, but the data tells a different story. Instead of turning back, the global energy system appears to be moving forward.

The Hormuz crisis may ultimately be remembered not as a moment of regression, but as an inflection point—one that revealed how far the transition to clean energy has already progressed, and how it may accelerate in the years ahead.