Nice dashboard. I have built a spreadsheet that I use for tracking weather that is fairly similar to this though I only have 25 years of data that I have collected so far. All of it was collected on my property though and I am up in one of the areas that could become pretty wet if this plays out like the other Super El Nino in 2015-2106. During that period, we almost matched our annual rainfall total between mid-October and 31 December, 2015.
An interesting thing to note in the chart is the projected peak of this El Nino. Their models project a single peak in about November. If this works like 2015-2016 then you can expect to see two peaks with the first occurring late this year and the second occurring by mid-March, 2027. There was a short period beginning in mid-November, 2015 when the ocean SST anomaly dropped from 3.1C to 2.3C before rebounding to 2.9C by mid-January, 2016 and it remained above 2C until mid-March, 2016. I don't see any allowance for a two-headed peak in those model outputs though it makes sense that winter mixing of Arctic waters could cool the eastern Pacific a few degrees without putting an end to the super El Nino conditions, with 2015-2106 being an obvious, recent analogue.
In section 5 the question of coupling appears to be answered in the affirmative in the data from the top left chart of Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and El Nino. There appears to be a long oscillation trend of about 12 years evident in the data. Perhaps one should see whether this correlates at all with sunspot cycles which have a similar period.
I can make another correlation from my own data that illustrates how the El Nino/La Nina cycle works here in NTexas.
Referring to section 4 - In Context you can see the flip to La Nina period around May 2010 and La Nina conditions held until August 2014 and it took until October 2015 for the rains to return. My records show that when it stopped raining in late May 2010 we were ahead of 20-year avg annual rainfall totals for that date. We ended that year and each year through 2014 with a rainfall deficit. By the end of 2014 we were firmly in a multi-year drought in NTexas with a cumulative rainfall deficit during that period of 31.1" (789.94mm) below 20 year avg annual rainfall.
The drought broke in October 2015 as I mentioned at the top, after SST had climber to super El Nino levels, the highest on record to that point. The rains arrived about a month before the first SST peak in November, 2015.
Today I have a sensor array that tells me that soil temps in the full sun from a probe 4-6" (~100-152 mm) below surface reached 100 degrees about three weeks ago during this long, hot spell leading into what I hope is a wet period. Soil moisture there is under 30% and everything that was green in mid-June when the rains stopped is dry and brown today except the hardiest native grasses and small plants. We've had 1.5" (38 mm) of rain since mid-June which puts us almost 5" (127 mm) under the 20 year avg annual total for this date.
Luckily there are signs that the hot, high pressure dome that has dominated our weather since June is moving out of the area and the rains that have been falling west and north of us will be falling on us in a few short weeks.
Thanks for posting this dashboard. It fits so well with my own data that it allows me time to plan for winter gardening. I grew carrots last year and if I can do that again it will make it two years in a row. That would be cool.
Interesting about the dual peaks. I'm still getting up to speed on El Niño, as of a few weeks ago it had not been something I dug into before.
Zeke's multi-year comparison chart (#1) ends in December, but the forecast chart does show through July 2027 all the different models. I don't see any modeling a double peak, though that NASA-GEOS-S2S-2 line peaks in February.
25 years of data, any other impacts you've seen from carbon dioxide rising? (~370 ppm in 2001 to 420 ppm this year)
El Niño sends the jet stream southward. Once the jet stream gets far enough south it tears apart any developing storms in the Gulf and Caribbean Sea before they have a chance to become a problem.
> Given the strong and still-strengthening El Niño, which tends to reduce the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin while boosting numbers in the Pacific, there is some chance that this season could end on Nov. 30 with no hurricanes.
But I am not liking this site. Both articles are mostly just restating "this is really rare" in 5+ different ways without explaining why. If anyone has a better site, a link would be most appreciated.
Overall the expectations are an increase in intensity and inability to predict. There is no expectation around consistency. That is why climate change is going to be such a disaster, it's not acutely predictable and it's death by a thousand cuts for us. The floods in Nepal etc are a good example. Very hard to predict, extremely distructive.
The Nepal incident is also messy because it's a extremely specific local/regional phenomenon, which was always a threat (and has happened before in other, less-populated areas around the Himalayas), but without consistent warming leading to glacier loss, it would be a random rare tragedy. Now that we know what happened and what causes it, we can pretty well expect that it will happen again... but there are so many similar hanging glacers high above steep V-shaped river valleys that we can't easily monitor or predict, not to mention alert locals and evacuate people in time. How many other similar local phenomena will appear? Impossible to say.
Thanks for saying this, this sparked something I’ve been thinking about recently.
I’ve said that this El Niño could be a tipping point for the climate conversation globally.
But I want to add some clarification. That “tipping point” is not going to happen unless something big changes in how we talk about global warming.
It’s entirely predictable that oil and gas spend hundreds of millions of dollars and convince the world that this El Niño is just a wacky weather event, nothing to be alarmed about, and nothing to do with that “global warming”, which by the way doesn’t exist. It's happened every other time there's been a big weather event.
In fact, this El Niño could instead bring about a push away from climate solutions and climate action, the exact opposite of what we want.
Today, humanity as a whole treats climate change as a marginal cost. It’s a drag on the economy, and nothing more. It’s a -1% in your calculations about profits, but nothing more. And when you’re growing at 5% a year, well, all climate change is is growing a little slower, and it would be expensive to solve anyway, so just keep growing and it’s fine. Not that any one person says that, but that’s the overall shape of how our society as a whole is responding to the changing climate. The very logical system we operate in will predictably drive the planet into a chaotic climate. And that is the message that would need to be broken free from for anything to change.
The 2026 El Niño could be our opportunity to change that conversation. But unless something changes, it will just be another weird weather event.
Well said. Generally speaking, most people I speak to about climate have a mental model for "climate change" is as a dimmer switch. The planet gets a little warmer, littler warmer, littler warmer, and we get a bit hotter each time. But this mental model loses the most important part about climate change.
It's not a dimmer switch. It's more like an ON / OFF switch.
We live in a stable climate today. Things are getting a little warmer. And we see some weird things. But actually, even at a little warmer, we are still in the same climate system.
However, if we flip to "OFF" on a stable climate by getting a lot warmer, our climate system moves to a chaotic state unlike anything we've ever known in human history.
Weather patterns in the Americas and Asia change in the summer through winter months. Rainfall changes throughout the Americas, and Asia sees worsening floods and storms.
Just because the Atlantic sees fewer hurricanes doesn't mean it's out of the woods - the number of winter storms increases.
> I thought the warming waters were supposed to increase the number of hurricanes?
That is a question. I suppose the answer is yes, you thought that.
You likely thought that because - Holy cow. Year after year after year of explosively strengthening Cat5 storms is fairly well unprecedented.
source: FL coastal resident and repeated hurricane relief worker.
Equally unprecedented is the supercharged El Nino that's been interfering with the Atlantic Basin's ability to form storms, in proportion to it's record development.
1) It's "fucking bad" that we are at a 60-year low for hurricanes this season.
2) It's "fucking bad" that "global warming" will cause more hurricanes in the future.
So how does it actually work? Climate "scientists" have been telling us that Earth has severely warmed already, and they've been telling us that the warming will cause more hurricanes. So when is that going to begin exactly?
The problem with practically every climate denier out there is you only see things from a very narrow local perspective. Skipping horrible weather in one area doesn’t mean the rest of the world is ok.
I think it would be fucking foolish to look at a system as complicated as the climate on planet earth and think “hm, I think warming by a couple degrees has barely any impact on the weather.” In fact, El Niño is an amazing example that localized warmth in one specific area can completely halt the hurricane season.
But while that’s great, for now, it’d be extremely short sighted to think that a system which can do that is always going to act in your favor.
In fact, a complete lack of weather systems at all is a bad thing if it means your region doesn’t get rain anymore. Which is currently happening in Indonesia, because of El Niño, and is devastating (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/el-nino-fuels-wil...).
The lack of hurricanes also means that heat is not being removed from the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, future hurricanes are likely to be more powerful and more frequent.
See, that’s where you are wrong. There have been no hurricanes because the Gulf of Mexico no longer exists, so all the energy stored in it has disappeared, in direct contravention of the second law of thermodynamics. Thank you President Trump!
This does happen every El Niño this years is pretty wild. Every local forecasters is saying "IDFK" and they are right. The the great Atlantic conveyor also starts to die this year we are in for evolution!
If 4-5 degree temperature jump comes true it will be an extinction for many species in tropical and sub tropical areas and millions of people will die as those will hit wet bulb temperature ie it will be to hot and humid for mammals
In 1877, 50 million people starved to death from El Niño. The charts are looking far worse in 2026 (thankfully our supply chains and infrastructure are much better)
We can't stop the storms but we can work to avert the impacts and save lives.
One thing we need help with is how to provide detailed recommendations per city/address to people based on historical El Niños. What are local emergency notification services, where can you get free sandbags, should you expect floods, droughts, tornadoes? (If you have ideas, here's our github: https://github.com/titojankowski/elninoready)
Our first step is bringing together people at New York Climate Week so that's what's up on the site right now.
Strange timeline indeed but Stripe is a big backer for climate solutions and climate research, including a $2B carbon dioxide removal initiative called Frontier: https://stripe.com/climate
Let's say I take it that whatever post you're referencing is slimy, built on disaster capitalism, and downright bad. And your being jaded is totally understandable.
To that I remind you: "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing"
What could you do to do drive the world in a different direction? (see my other posts for projects if you want help out with our El Niño Ready dashboard)
> In 1877, 50 million people starved to death from El Niño. The charts are looking far worse in 2026 (thankfully our supply chains and infrastructure are much better today)
Yes, much better supply chains and infrastructure are examples of how growth and innovation make us more resilient.
49 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 12.9 ms ] threadWe're way off the charts already.
An interesting thing to note in the chart is the projected peak of this El Nino. Their models project a single peak in about November. If this works like 2015-2016 then you can expect to see two peaks with the first occurring late this year and the second occurring by mid-March, 2027. There was a short period beginning in mid-November, 2015 when the ocean SST anomaly dropped from 3.1C to 2.3C before rebounding to 2.9C by mid-January, 2016 and it remained above 2C until mid-March, 2016. I don't see any allowance for a two-headed peak in those model outputs though it makes sense that winter mixing of Arctic waters could cool the eastern Pacific a few degrees without putting an end to the super El Nino conditions, with 2015-2106 being an obvious, recent analogue.
In section 5 the question of coupling appears to be answered in the affirmative in the data from the top left chart of Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and El Nino. There appears to be a long oscillation trend of about 12 years evident in the data. Perhaps one should see whether this correlates at all with sunspot cycles which have a similar period.
I can make another correlation from my own data that illustrates how the El Nino/La Nina cycle works here in NTexas.
Referring to section 4 - In Context you can see the flip to La Nina period around May 2010 and La Nina conditions held until August 2014 and it took until October 2015 for the rains to return. My records show that when it stopped raining in late May 2010 we were ahead of 20-year avg annual rainfall totals for that date. We ended that year and each year through 2014 with a rainfall deficit. By the end of 2014 we were firmly in a multi-year drought in NTexas with a cumulative rainfall deficit during that period of 31.1" (789.94mm) below 20 year avg annual rainfall.
The drought broke in October 2015 as I mentioned at the top, after SST had climber to super El Nino levels, the highest on record to that point. The rains arrived about a month before the first SST peak in November, 2015.
Today I have a sensor array that tells me that soil temps in the full sun from a probe 4-6" (~100-152 mm) below surface reached 100 degrees about three weeks ago during this long, hot spell leading into what I hope is a wet period. Soil moisture there is under 30% and everything that was green in mid-June when the rains stopped is dry and brown today except the hardiest native grasses and small plants. We've had 1.5" (38 mm) of rain since mid-June which puts us almost 5" (127 mm) under the 20 year avg annual total for this date.
Luckily there are signs that the hot, high pressure dome that has dominated our weather since June is moving out of the area and the rains that have been falling west and north of us will be falling on us in a few short weeks.
Thanks for posting this dashboard. It fits so well with my own data that it allows me time to plan for winter gardening. I grew carrots last year and if I can do that again it will make it two years in a row. That would be cool.
Zeke's multi-year comparison chart (#1) ends in December, but the forecast chart does show through July 2027 all the different models. I don't see any modeling a double peak, though that NASA-GEOS-S2S-2 line peaks in February.
25 years of data, any other impacts you've seen from carbon dioxide rising? (~370 ppm in 2001 to 420 ppm this year)
> Given the strong and still-strengthening El Niño, which tends to reduce the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin while boosting numbers in the Pacific, there is some chance that this season could end on Nov. 30 with no hurricanes.
But I am not liking this site. Both articles are mostly just restating "this is really rare" in 5+ different ways without explaining why. If anyone has a better site, a link would be most appreciated.
I’ve said that this El Niño could be a tipping point for the climate conversation globally.
But I want to add some clarification. That “tipping point” is not going to happen unless something big changes in how we talk about global warming.
It’s entirely predictable that oil and gas spend hundreds of millions of dollars and convince the world that this El Niño is just a wacky weather event, nothing to be alarmed about, and nothing to do with that “global warming”, which by the way doesn’t exist. It's happened every other time there's been a big weather event.
In fact, this El Niño could instead bring about a push away from climate solutions and climate action, the exact opposite of what we want.
Today, humanity as a whole treats climate change as a marginal cost. It’s a drag on the economy, and nothing more. It’s a -1% in your calculations about profits, but nothing more. And when you’re growing at 5% a year, well, all climate change is is growing a little slower, and it would be expensive to solve anyway, so just keep growing and it’s fine. Not that any one person says that, but that’s the overall shape of how our society as a whole is responding to the changing climate. The very logical system we operate in will predictably drive the planet into a chaotic climate. And that is the message that would need to be broken free from for anything to change.
The 2026 El Niño could be our opportunity to change that conversation. But unless something changes, it will just be another weird weather event.
It's not a dimmer switch. It's more like an ON / OFF switch.
We live in a stable climate today. Things are getting a little warmer. And we see some weird things. But actually, even at a little warmer, we are still in the same climate system.
However, if we flip to "OFF" on a stable climate by getting a lot warmer, our climate system moves to a chaotic state unlike anything we've ever known in human history.
Weather patterns in the Americas and Asia change in the summer through winter months. Rainfall changes throughout the Americas, and Asia sees worsening floods and storms.
Just because the Atlantic sees fewer hurricanes doesn't mean it's out of the woods - the number of winter storms increases.
That is a question. I suppose the answer is yes, you thought that.
You likely thought that because - Holy cow. Year after year after year of explosively strengthening Cat5 storms is fairly well unprecedented.
source: FL coastal resident and repeated hurricane relief worker.
Equally unprecedented is the supercharged El Nino that's been interfering with the Atlantic Basin's ability to form storms, in proportion to it's record development.
1) It's "fucking bad" that we are at a 60-year low for hurricanes this season.
2) It's "fucking bad" that "global warming" will cause more hurricanes in the future.
So how does it actually work? Climate "scientists" have been telling us that Earth has severely warmed already, and they've been telling us that the warming will cause more hurricanes. So when is that going to begin exactly?
Climate scientists, in fact, predicted that there would be fewer hurricanes than normal this year because of El Niño. (https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/how-does-el-nino-impact-atlantic-h...)
I think it would be fucking foolish to look at a system as complicated as the climate on planet earth and think “hm, I think warming by a couple degrees has barely any impact on the weather.” In fact, El Niño is an amazing example that localized warmth in one specific area can completely halt the hurricane season.
But while that’s great, for now, it’d be extremely short sighted to think that a system which can do that is always going to act in your favor.
In fact, a complete lack of weather systems at all is a bad thing if it means your region doesn’t get rain anymore. Which is currently happening in Indonesia, because of El Niño, and is devastating (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/el-nino-fuels-wil...).
https://news.wfsu.org/state-news/2026-08-31/rising-humid-hea...
Of course, I kid.
Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, and Maya.
I saw someone call out the stock performance of $OC (shingles) vs strong el ninos... it seems so obvious. What else is like that?
Stripe's climate scientist Zeke Hausfather came to AirMiners to tell us about what's next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Xu_H3Wo8o
In 1877, 50 million people starved to death from El Niño. The charts are looking far worse in 2026 (thankfully our supply chains and infrastructure are much better)
We can't stop the storms but we can work to avert the impacts and save lives.
We're building tools at: https://elninoready.earth
One thing we need help with is how to provide detailed recommendations per city/address to people based on historical El Niños. What are local emergency notification services, where can you get free sandbags, should you expect floods, droughts, tornadoes? (If you have ideas, here's our github: https://github.com/titojankowski/elninoready)
Our first step is bringing together people at New York Climate Week so that's what's up on the site right now.
AMA
Who?? The ecommerce website wants us to listen to the climate scientist they bought?
Media focus on bad news. Average person seems to be more interested in emotionally charged, bad, or controversial news. Not positive stuff.
> …but Stripe is a big backer for climate solutions…
his post reads pretty clearly as funding “solutions” to adapt to coming climate change rather than “how do we mitigate climate change”
this is why i’m skeptical of people who work for an economic org.
it’s like some these companies are salivating at the idea of Disaster Capitalism.
“it’s going to open up so many chances to make trillions!”
i recognize how jaded i am, but this just feels slimey “there’s much more money to be made if we exacerbate the disaster rather than slow it!”
Let's say I take it that whatever post you're referencing is slimy, built on disaster capitalism, and downright bad. And your being jaded is totally understandable.
To that I remind you: "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing"
What could you do to do drive the world in a different direction? (see my other posts for projects if you want help out with our El Niño Ready dashboard)
Yes, much better supply chains and infrastructure are examples of how growth and innovation make us more resilient.
And, at the same time, polluting the climate makes the climate system far more susceptible to flipping to a chaotic system unknown to humanity.
As Stewart Brand says, "We are as gods and might as well get good at it."
Not sure why folks downvoted you.