It's About to Get Even Hotter—Can We Learn From It?

I am (mostly) going to take a break from writing about the war for a day, because big though it is, it’s not quite the biggest thing happening on our planet. Or rather, its widespread destruction is taking place inside a larger context.

President Donald Trump’s endless folly (first tariffs, now a desperately stupid war that has closed the Strait of Hormuz) has caused what everyone is beginning to understand is widespread economic damage. As The New York Times reported today, “This is the big one,” and “the fallout is rattling households and businesses in neighborhoods all over the globe.”

On a stable planet, though, the damage might be contained and repaired; someone as incompetent as Trump (who is now describing his war as a “short excursion” and insisting that the Strait is in “very good shape”) will eventually (please God) burn himself out. Our bigger problem, as we’re about to be reminded, is that the planet is the furthest thing from stable. The backdrop is about to become the foreground, and with that the drama will shift once more.

It’s already hot, all over the world and here in the United States. That’s been a little hidden these past months, because the country’s population and power center—the northeast corridor from Boston to DC—has had a cold winter; until the last few days of rapid-onset mud season it’s felt like an old-school winter in New England (with sublime skiing, which has kept me sane). And Minnesota, the source of much of the year’s news so far, was cold too, at least in bursts. But we’ve been the exception: in fact, it was the second-warmest winter on record in the continental US, and that’s because the West broke every possible record, usually by a mile:

Several cities can now claim winter 2025-26 as their warmest on record, including locations with over a century of data, like Salt Lake City (152 years of data), Tucson (130 years of data), and Rapid City, South Dakota (114 years of data).

Phoenix, Arizona, obliterated its previous record (a record that was only a year old, mind you) by almost 3°F, a pummeling of a record in the realm of three-month temperature data.

Albuquerque, New Mexico clobbered its previous record warmest winter by 3°F, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center. Helena, Montana, Las Vegas, and Lubbock, Texas were among the other cities record warm this winter.

I don’t want to brush by those numbers. Phoenix and Albuquerque have temperature records going back more than a century. If they were going to beat the old record for a three-month stretch, something that shouldn’t happen very often, it should be by a tenth of a degree. That’s how statistics work on a set that large—or it’s how they did work on a stable planet. Three degrees is insane. And if that’s insane, then what’s going to happen in the next week is truly bonkers. A giant heat dome is set to settle in over the Southwest, bringing new temperature records. As The Washington Post reported Thursday, Palm Springs California is projected to reach 104°F on Monday; the old record for the date is 95°F. Again, that’s statistically bizarre in a way that makes my head hurt:

This record-breaking heat dome will contribute to worsening drought conditions across the Intermountain West.

In Utah, snowpack remains at record low levels according to Meyer. He said that it would take a foot of snow in Salt Lake City for the season to catch up with even the second-lowest seasonal snowfall total—and that a storm of that magnitude isn’t expected to come.

“The knockout punch comes in the form of Utah’s reservoirs, which are only at 40% of capacity right now,” Meyer said. “All this means we are likely going to see some very tangible water supply cuts and conservation efforts by the state this year.”

The weather forecast and climate outlook community in Utah was “filled with trepidation” because drought relief looked unlikely, added Meyer, stressing that much more meaningful impacts were possible for agricultural communities as water conservation efforts grow.

“Right now, every drop is going to count this year,” he said.

Across the region, New Mexico was also reporting its lowest snowpack on record and Colorado was in a similar situation.

Here’s how Daniel Swain and the good folks at Weather West described the heat dome that is forming as of Friday morning:

In fact: the strongest mid-tropospheric ridge ever observed in the southwestern US in March is expected to develop by Friday, and then will probably go on to break that new record (set this week) when it re-organizes into an even broader and stronger ridge next week.

In case you’re wondering, this heat is in no way confined to land. The oceans, which have soaked up most of the planet’s excess warmth, are crazily warm right now too:

Sea surface temperatures off the coast of Southern California have risen as much as 5°F above average for the time of year, causing a strong, Category 2 marine heat wave to develop.

These unusually warm waters will provide a boost to air temperatures near the coast, especially at night, preventing them from dropping off as much as they otherwise would.

“A strong to severe marine heatwave is ongoing off the coast of California,” wrote Colin McCarthy, a storm chaser affiliated with the University of California at Davis.

In early March, ocean temperatures reached the mid- to upper 60s at Scripps Pier in La Jolla, California.

“That’s the average ocean temperature for mid-June,” McCarthy said.

And here’s the kicker. All this is happening during a La Niña “cool phase” of the Pacific, something that will soon change. I alerted you exactly a month ago to the likelihood we were going to see an El Niño kick off sometime this summer; in the last few weeks the chances of that have grown stronger, and more to the point it looks like it could be an exceptionally strong “super” version of the warming current. The normally cautious-almost-to-a-fault climate scientist Zeke Hausfather came out with his new forecast Thursday afternoon, and it was a doozy:

I’ve collected 11 different models that have been updated since the beginning of March. Each of these in turn features a number of ensemble members, so that we end up with 433 total ENSO forecasts…

These clearly show that a strong El Niño is indeed likely to develop later in the year. While I’d probably discount some of the higher values (much above 3°C) as outliers here, the median and mean across all the models still gives an estimate around 2.5°C, which would put it notably stronger than the 2023-2024 El Niño and close to if not matching what we saw back in 2015-2016.

So what does this mean for global temperatures this year and in 2027? All things being equal, the lag between peak El Niño conditions and the global surface temperature response would result in the largest impacts on 2027 temperatures (as El Niño events generally peak between November and January). It would still boost 2026, but probably not enough to set a new record this year.

However, I have to be a bit cautious here. Long time readers may remember my post in May 2023 where I deemed it unlikely that 2023 would set a new record (given this historical lag in global temperature response to El Niño) and argued that 2024 would instead. I was partially wrong–2023 was weird, and the heat came much earlier than expected. We think the extended triple-dip La Niña event between 2020 and 2023 may have primed the system for more rapid heating, something absent this time around. But we don’t know for sure. Fool me once, and all that.

Either way, this means that 2027 looks increasingly likely to set a new record, perhaps by a sizable margin if we end up on the high end of the range of El Niño forecasts.

That Hausfather and the brasher Jim Hansen are in basic agreement here should terrify us. We’re going to see temperatures unlike any that humans have seen before, which means we’re going to see chaotic weather unlike humans have seen before. If you think this is some kind of lefty enviro fantasy, check out this source:

“Due to the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases, the climate system cannot effectively exhaust the heat released in a major El Niño event before the next El Niño comes along and pushes the baseline upward again,” Defense Department meteorologist Eric Webb said.

Therefore, a super El Niño in 2026-27 would disperse more heat than other very strong events in 1982-83, 1997-98, and 2015-16.

And were not going to know what hit us, in several ways. The substack Future Earth Catalog published an interview Wednesday with veteran Florida weatherman John Morales which was the best account I’ve seen yet of what the Trump cuts to our scientific system mean in real time:

The cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service have been devastating. If you look at the statistics of forecast accuracy for tropical cyclone tracks and intensities from the National Hurricane Center, they were off in 2025. And anecdotally, I’m not the only meteorologist who will tell you that day-to-day forecasting has become more challenging. The weather models are flip-flopping from one solution to the next.

Think about how many times TV meteorologists in the fall of 2025 had to show you two or three models with different solutions and say, “Well, this is what this model says, but yesterday it was saying something different.” That leads to more confusion among the public—and it makes our job of saving life and property more difficult.

We’ve been missing 15 to 20% of our weather balloon data. And those missing balloons are upstream—out West, in the Plains, in the Intermountain West, and especially in Alaska. That’s where our weather comes from. We’re no longer able to really know what’s going on out there. And nothing provides the detail weather balloons can: every 15 feet, all the way up to 100,000 feet.

So we may not know what’s coming, but we can guess it’s going to be bad. For instance, I noted before that the Western snowpack is at record low levels. Even in California, which, due to a couple of record-level atmospheric rivers off the warm Pacific saw lots of midwinter snow, the early heat in the Sierras has already led to widespread melt. I do not think it’s fear-mongering to warn that fire may be a serious danger this season in the West.

And what’s happening in the US will be paralleled in places around the planet as El Niño takes us up the escalator. A new study just found that rising temperatures are already taking many humans past the point where they can live with any kind of comfort. As Todd Woody reports:

The number of days where extreme heat makes it too dangerously hot to walk the dog, sweep the porch, and engage in other ordinary pursuits has doubled around the world over the past 75 years, according to new research.

Scientists determined that on average, those 65 and older experience a month a year when heat prevents them from routine activities. Parts of Asia, Africa, Australia, and North America are becoming unlivable for senior citizens, the researchers said. Younger adults also are losing time as climate-driven heat restricts their lives for 50 hours a year.

Overall, more than a third of the global population resides in regions where heat severely affects daily life, according to the peer-reviewed paper published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research: Health.

But it may be getting too hot for some key physical systems too. It seems likely that this is the year the Colorado River system may finally have to deal with the fact that it simply can’t provide the water people have been counting on. A new study last week found clear signs that the Gulf Stream is beginning to drift northward, a “clear sign” that worries about the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC) are no mere phantasm:

The findings indicate that the movement of the Gulf Stream could be a “canary in the coal mine” for the AMOC’s collapse. According to their analysis of satellite data, the Gulf Stream has already been nudged northwards from the coast near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, since the early 1990s. This is likely to be the result of the AMOC dwindling and losing its grip.

We don’t know for sure how the Iran war will play out, nor the El Niño; at the moment, though, things look ominous. All I’m saying is, the next six months could be the ultimate in teachable moments, with rapidly rising prices for oil, and rapidly rising temperatures. And what do you know, we have a midterm exam coming up on November 3.