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From USA Today:

Chances are growing that the El Niño in the Pacific Ocean will become one of the strongest on record , based on signals seen by forecasters and computer models, my team partner Doyle Rice wrote in USA TODAY.

Sea surface temperatures in the region continue to set daily records, above the records set in 2015 and 2016. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday it sees an 81% chance of “a very strong El Niño.” Other experts think it will be among the strongest ever, if not the strongest.

Just what that would mean for the U.S. and the rest of the world will emerge in the months to come. 

In case you're wondering why the earth is experiencing 1000-year floods, stronger hurricanes, longer droughts, wildfires...

sad occasion tho

2014 / 2026

btw

Excerpt from this story from Earther/Gizmodo:

It’s the dead of winter in Antarctica, but for the past several weeks, the Antarctic Peninsula has been experiencing an unprecedented heatwave. Researchers are sounding the alarm after temperatures soared well above average earlier this month, smashing the previous winter heat record.

Temperatures at Argentina’s Esperanza base, situated in Hope Bay at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, reached 59.7 degrees Fahrenheit (15.4 degrees Celsius) on June 6, scientists told The Guardian. That’s 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) higher than the previous record-high winter temperature logged at the base in 1998. According to France 24, two other Argentine research stations on the peninsula—Marambio and San Martin—also logged record-breaking temperatures between June 5 and 6.

“This is absolutely crazy,” Raúl Cordero, a climate scientist and assistant professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, told The Guardian. Esperanza’s new temperature record is about 36 degrees F (20 degrees C) above normal for this time of year, he explained. “That is a huge anomaly.”

Climate change is driving up temperatures around the world, but the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth. In fact, it’s been warming five times faster than the global average. The peninsula has experienced more warming since 1950 than anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere, with an average temperature increase of almost 5.4 degrees F (3 degrees C).

The reasons why are complex, but one of the main drivers is sea ice loss. When ice melts, it exposes the darker ocean surface, which has a lower albedo and therefore absorbs more heat from the Sun. This drives up regional temperatures and, in turn, accelerates ice melt, creating a feedback loop that has supercharged Antarctic warming.

The temperatures recorded on the Antarctic Peninsula this month underscore the consequences of this rapid warming trend. Scientists at the Esperanza base logged the June 6 temperature record during a winter heatwave that caused the maximum daily temperature to remain stubbornly above freezing for three consecutive weeks, The Guardian reports.

This relentless warmth has caused “large areas in the far north of the white continent to remain free of snow,” Cordero told France 24. He described it as “an unusual scene in the Antarctic landscape during winter.”

Excerpt from this story from Earther/Gizmodo:

Attention: DOGE’d and RIF’ed U.S. government meteorologists and climate scientists. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is looking to hire a new executive director focused on “catastrophe modeling.” Ideally, someone who could be a “subject matter expert in natural catastrophe and climate,” upping their portfolio’s “resilience to physical climate risks.”

And they’re not alone. Some hedge funds are offering as much as $1 million per year for the right extreme weather forecaster. As one recruiter who specializes in placing experts in this niche world of “insurance-linked securities” told Bloomberg News, anthropogenic climate change’s most canny and enterprising Cassandras have been netting “exponentially higher” pay bumps compared to their past salaries over the last two years.

Not unlike the mortgage-backed securities of the 2008 financial crisis, insurance-linked securities (ILS) reimagine an insurance company’s outstanding policy risks and potential rewards as assets that it can market to outside investors, like hedge funds. Imagine an insurance company is worried that potential floods might force it to lose millions fulfilling homeowners’ claims during an impending hurricane. It could issue a so-called catastrophe bond whose purchasers effectively backstop those insurance payments—unless, of course, those genius investors have better climate scientists on staff than the insurance company does.