I’m generally pretty measured in how I discuss climate data. There has been only one time in recent years when I was truly shocked: when global temperatures came in for September 2023 at a full 0.5C warmer than any prior September on record.1 Once until today, that is. With the July runs now in from 667 ensemble members across 14 different seasonal forecast models, it looks like this year’s El Niño is not only very likely to be the strongest event since reliable records began – it may end up the strongest by a truly mind-blowing margin.
The multi-model median for the event’s peak (measured as detrended sea surface temperature anomalies in the Niño 3.4 region of the tropical Pacific) currently stands at 3.6C, roughly 0.8C hotter than the prior record of 2.75C set in 2015-16. For context, the gap between the strongest and the fifth strongest El Niño of the past 150 years is only about 0.5C. The models are forecasting something outside the envelope of anything we have ever observed.
—
Below, Ben Noll is a Meteorologist with the Washington Post.
A few things stand out in this figure. First, no event in a century and a half of observations has ever pushed meaningfully past 2.75C. The legendary 1877-78 eventcomes closest, in a statistical dead heat with 2015-16 (2.73C vs 2.75C, well within the uncertainty of 19th-century ship data). Second, the middle 80% of this year’s forecast ensemble sits entirely at or above that all-time record: even the low end of the plume (2.8C) grazes it. Around 91% of ensemble members exceed the 2015-16 record at their peak.
To see what this would look like as the event unfolds, we can compare the forecast trajectory against the five strongest events ever observed, month by month through the development year and into the following spring.
A serious warning… I hope it will draw real attention, instead of the fog of greedy special interests.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Yes, I’m sure the oil n gas n coal corporations will cancel their ALEC memberships, withdraw funding from the Heartland Institute, and express sincere and heartfelt sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of this year’s victims of climate catastrophe via the El Niño.
Oh, wait. Were you serious? Sorry.
I expect that within a day or 2 after the event ends, there will be jackalpack alphabet agency employees and internet trolls pointing out the drop in temperature anomalies, and saying that global warming—which deny ever started—is ending.
There’s a triple whammy hitting global food supply: (1) Operation Epic Fuckup has cut off a large portion of the fertilizer supply from the Persian Gulf, (2) Russia, typically a great exporter of wheat, doesn’t have enough diesel to harvest all of its wheat, and will prioritize domestic needs over export, and (3) a scary big El Niño is in the works.
Actually, it’s more of a quadruple whammy, as “diesel runs economies” still holds, and the ongoing global diesel shortage will raise the cost of harvest and transport all over the world (even in the US, where local refineries are exporting as much as they can at global market prices). Russia has not just stopped exporting diesel, but now must import it to replace the refinery capacity it has been losing the past few months.
Operation Epstein Fury? Since the whole purpose was to distract from der Gropenführer’s relationship with the guy and from each of the other fuckups committed for the same purpose.