Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

To be fair, we didn't have the World Food Programme in 1877 which lets us anticipate droughts distribution and crop failures months ahead of time.

That being said, the existing energy crisis and fertilizer crisis can significantly compound the negative impacts of this El Niño even if we are able to anticipate it.

A modern 1877 scale event would probably immediately fuel (pun intended) a furious climate change debate, even though attributing the existence of the El Niño itself to fossil fuels would not be scientifically justified... or maybe was the 1877 El Niño caused by fossil fuels (so many Wars happened in those years) ?

I don't find that sentence confusing, but I definitely found the article poorly written. Here's the sixth nearly identical map and now let's repeat the exact same thing already stated five times or more while including one new sentence of detail. The density of actual information in the writing is so low that it's hard to follow.

The article is so repetitive and padded out with empty prose that I found myself ignoring whole paragraphs. It's like the author decided to describe what an el niño is, then describe what an el niño is, then describe a super el niño, then describe what an el niño is, then describe what an el niño is, then describe what an el niño is, then describe the possible consequences of a super el niño, then describe what an el niño is, then describe what an el niño is, and finally describe what an el niño is.

The author is saying the surface of the ocean (where it's easiest to measure temps, so we do that the most) is the 'footprint' or the full colum of warm water below it. Additionally, like a footprint the surface area it represents might be smaller too as warm water continues to rise.

Area vs volume.

If these are the temperatures on the surface, think of the depths. There is a whole additional dimension to multiply (integrate) across.

The added energy is far greater than you might think simply by looking at the surface.

There's a few AI tells in the article. The overuse of bolded text throughout - and the confusing sentences.

I stumbled across this too but going back to the picture made the sentence easy to understand. Maybe the sentence would have worked better if it was located before the picture. (The picture shows a ramp going up to the right deep under the ocean surface - the subsurface warm core)

To use an extremely inappropriate metaphor, they’re saying the warm temperatures at the surface are just the tip of the iceberg.

Yea, I will admit my imagination started to go off as I read that

"In simple terms" should not preceed that sentence imo

It seems quite straightforward.

I don't know enough about climate science, but south swell usually is the result of west-to-east storms coming off of Australia. In Hawaii, this summer's south swell has been extremely consistent big swells. I imagine it's something like the west coast off South America heating up causes the balance of the southern hemisphere off Africa to counteract that.

Here is an article about the heat wave in Europe: https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/excessive-heat-...

I think you might be on to something: I am by no means a weather enthusiast or expert, nor do I live in California: the El Niños building up in 1997 and 2015 had similar seasons, 2023 not, the current fast onset and wave seasons (durable good surfable waves in winter) match especially well with 2015. 2023 was the exception but also slower onset. Also La Niña winters also had good winter conditions, but not as durable. So good surf conditions in NorCal outside of La Niña winters might be a visceral leading indicator for fast onset El Niño.

Check out stormsurf001 on YouTube. He’s been tracking the development of the El Niño for months now.

I (SoCal) kinda hate El Niño. Seems like it always means way more weather (blown out days) and most reefs around here are maxed out beyond overhead. It’s nice to get lots of groundswell but I’ll take 2-3 and high pressure over 6-7 and rainy any day.

It was inevitable we'd get to the point where climate change began substantially disrupting ecology and human livelihoods. Looks like we're ahead of schedule.

People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen.

Ministry for the Future ch. 1 scenario?

https://www.scribd.com/document/979965270/Robinson-Kim-Stanl...

> But this is something the world has never seen and I mean that literally

Lets not forget there have been bigger and hotter events than this in local past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1877%E2%80%931878_El_Ni%C3%B1o...

You may tie this in to climate change in general to prove your point, but this is a discussion about El Nino weather event and it is important to remember the current situation is not unprecedented.

The future will be much worse. Some effects take years or decades to manifest and we wont see them during a relatively short event like El Niño.

Eg: the severe disruption of the jet stream or the collapse of the AMOC.

Plus all the long term feedbacks like methane etc.

Cheap cooling vests distributed at scale, kept cool or "recharged" by a portable and unpluggable solar panel, seems necessary. Individual air conditioning is too expensive and most affected people need to work outside during the daytime.

Sorry, just below the graph, just above the map.

I at least think of El Nino kind of running into South, building up in the Pacific. But the heat cuts across, then down, and pools in Antarctica here, is how I read it.

I'm in Waco right now and the car said it was 107 today. If one more person says "but it's a dry heat"...

I'm currently sitting in the middle of 100mph gusting winds as every island in Hawaii is under hurricane or tropical storm warning, with at least 100k people without power right now. Hurricane season in Hawaii is usually in Sept/Oct.

It's 96 ℉ / 36 °C @ 60% humidity every day for 5 months in hill country with no rain in sight. The El Niňo rain may not get here until November. We're right at the 100 meridian west so it's between hot semi-arid (BSH) and humid subtropical (Cfa), and most storms seem to bypass us to the north by about 20 miles. It was growing zone 8b but changed +3 ℉ to 9a in 10 years.

One positive is that solar (and probably other renewables too) prices are plummeting and are now the cheapest way to generate power - so in economic terms, I hope this trend continues and accelerates even more to the point where even fossil fuel addicts can't resist putting a solar panel on their roof.

In the UK and other European countries, I see every month we're breaking records on the percentage of power generated from renewables.

Check out https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live - it shows the UK is currently generating 30%+ of it's power from solar, which is incredible.

We wanted to exploit all natural resources to maximum extent using our science and tech without any regard to the side effects. The advantage is free. It helps our business. Business gains are human progress. Tech is wonderful. What are you talking about?

Would have been doable if we could have switched to nuclear, but no.

I’m a capitalist, but the only conclusion I can arrive at is that neo liberal capitalism makes it impossible to « do the right thing ». What we have is the logical result of the incentives at play

Not true. El Nino (increases CO2) and Albedo (long term - it's decreasing) are problematic issues in this area. If it's settled science why bother to even consider other factors? Doubtful if humanity would survive the catastrophe resulting from a global interdiction of the kind you suggest and we're not dense for understanding that. Greening of the planet (plants need carbon to grow) which has contributed $trillions to world productivity would also taper off. Moreover the related sulfate emissions actually mask warming - reductions in these emissions is related to some of the recent temperature increases. So you could likely get a temporary spike in warming. All that said, there are sensible routes to reducing human influence on the planet.