As the triple dip La Niña wanes, we need to consider the consequences of the next El Niño on the Arctic Sea Ice minimum, which ‘normally’ unfolds in the middle of September. That could soon stretch into October, adding weeks to the melt season, with its attendant consequences.
“The ENSO Outlook continues at LA NIÑA, but La Niña is weakening.”
“Although NINO indices in the tropical Pacific are similar to two weeks ago, cool sea surface temperature anomalies in the central and particularly the eastern tropical Pacific have weakened. However, the atmosphere remains indicative of La Niña.”
“Climate models anticipate neutral ENSO during February 2023.”
“La Niña typically increases the chance of above average summer rainfall in northern and eastern Australia.”
We’ll have more certainty in May or June 2023. I expect it to be a catastrophic tipping point and “Step Change” in the great unravelling of the biosphere. The Great Barrier Reef and I wait with bated breath, sigh. ENSO Forecast; An alert system for the El Niño–Southern Oscillation
To stay in touch with the Arctic Sea Ice levels, I highly recommend both Zack Labe and Kris Van Steenbergen
Michael Dowd courageously brought up the subject of “Climate Grief”. Michael has a superlative series of interviews under the “Post Doom” framework. The series including one interview with me can be found here: Post Doom, Regenerative conversations exploring overshoot grief, grounding, and gratitude.
We discussed Stephen Jenkinson’s seminal work which can be found here: Stephen Jenkinson returns to Nature Bats Last
I’ve previously delved into the issue of climate grief: The Coming Tsunami of Grief
Managing our grief and more importantly the grief of our youth, is our biggest pre-collapse challenge.
It’s impossible to have this discussion without addressing the issue of tipping points we’ve already triggered. Guy McPherson has chronicled over six dozen in his monster climate change essay “Climate Change Summary”.
One of the audience questions concerned the slowing down of the AMOC. My reply was that its current consequence has been the disruption of the Jetstream’s.
Jennifer Francis has done excellent, if conservative work in this field. Jennifer Francis – Understanding the Jetstream
Below is an image of what the Jetstream’s used to look like. To see what it looks like today check out “Climate Reanalyzer” for the latest meandering!
The subject of pestilence came up and the fact that “Smallpox” formerly eradicated, has remerged from the melting permafrost. More on that threat: Pestilence: Another Consequence of Losing the Cryosphere and the Permafrost
Professor Paul Ehrlich’s new book was discussed and can be found here: Life: A Journey through Science and Politics
Our interview with Professor Corey Bradshaw on his paper “Extinction Cascades “is embedded below: Professor Corey Bradshaw explains the unfolding “Extinction Cascades” on Nature Bats Last.
The critical issue Professor McPherson and I wish to convey is the rapidity of the unravelling.
To quote Professor Albert Bartlett: “The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race is our Inability to Truly Understand the Exponential Function.
I’m editing the blog on the 12/10/2024 with this analysis from Jim Massa, our former guest on Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM
Good luck everyone, we sure are going to need it! Soon the living will envy the dead.
Have your own say on our predicament below & subscribe to the blog to keep up with my interpretation of the great unravelling of the biosphere. Aroha Nui from Aotearoa New Zealand.
If you feel the urge to buy me a pint or two you can do it via Paypal: kevin@iconicproperties.co.nz
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
And what is this El Nino going to do to Antarctica summer…so thinks Hunziker today:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/06/antarcticas-dicey-summer/
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Just how fast is this freaking chunk of ice going to melt in the next few months? I’m betting it isn’t going to be surprising to some people, eh Kevin? What going to fall off/break up/disintegrate next?
sealintheSelkirks
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“This year ‘virtually certain’ to be warmest in 125,000 years, EU scientists say”.
Next year will be much warmer when the full effects of the El Nino kicks in.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/this-year-virtually-certain-be-warmest-125000-years-eu-scientists-say-2023-11-08/?fbclid=IwAR0OR8LJbp_dP02dDCk3yHuku9Nj9pSILpxer31pWCzspuZC6HZH8kQTtcs
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El Niño reaches ‘strong’ intensity, scorching 2024 ahead for the planet.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-16/holder-nsw-el-nino-set-to-peak-as-one-of-the-strongest/103104264?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other&fbclid=IwAR0I6y_d-pnGXl6Joh-76DJobbVZpp2T1MIU3FZsQLiT81fHvQqKBPPsxXk
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Oh man am I seeing it up here already. Zero snow on the ground anywhere except a very light dusting on the tallest peaks. Temps are barely below freezing at night, ground isn’t frozen yet, and above 0’C again today topping out at 7’C this afternoon under a clear sunny sky. The ski hill only has snow on Chewelah Peak under the lift but zero at the lodge except for a big pile they have been running ‘snowguns’ (icy-crap-guns) draining drinking water supplies to make. They did this maybe three weeks ago and had a huge pile that was supposed to be spread out to help them open for the season…then it rained. Now they are trying it again. But there is NO BASE and certainly not enough to get people back down to the lodge on ice paths like they did last year opening with five freaking inches which is insanely dangerous but, you know, gets them money coming in because boarders and skiers are so hungry to go play. Not this year! The poor multi-millionaire that bought my local hill from the family-run business has sunk nearly $10 million into this low-elevation hill.
Guess there’s an ‘atmospheric river’ hitting California already this winter from a phone call from a former Kenpo student I had a couple days ago, but hey, all that 7% more water evaporation has to go somewhere
and fall, eh?
May we live in interesting times.
sealintheSelkirks
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Dr. James E. Hansen
15 December at 05:04 ·
“Staggering acceleration of global warming is underway, driven by a huge planetary energy imbalance, which in turn is traced mainly to our Faustian aerosol bargain. Six months more of the acceleration are still to come. See Measuring Stick”
https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-warming-acceleration-el-nino-measuring-stick-looks-good?fbclid=IwAR0AUmwa1QH8OXuUfZthGvEKHscRMIvSUQRDd-rA8wLyMnDD49ltrQdaQWo
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“Climate scientists predict devastating weather conditions for the Southern Hemisphere summer”.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/22/wghv-d22.html?fbclid=IwAR2hZ7f1rgNoc9v6esIHf4_o1–xQWKEob9F2QXGCAStIq6oKyA-UpAml9c
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Missing the feeling of a white Christmas? That might be solastalgia.
https://www.vox.com/culture/24001256/snow-winter-climate-change-solastalgia-warming
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I’m sure feeling this as there really isn’t much snow here at all, and not just at my elevation, in these mountains. The US measurement of 1″ of snow covering the ground on Christmas morning (not falling, just having that much). Since that means one is having a ‘white’ Christmas, it certainly didn’t measure up today. Nothing on trees or roofs, huge patches of dirt circles spreading out in all directions from the conifers since the last tiny snowfall, along with bare ground and grass showing. Daytime temperature isn’t even freezing at this point.
I’ve been watching it shift in these mountains for twenty winters now, and many years more in the Bear River Range and in Mt. Shasta
sealintheSelkirks
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Have a great end to the year Seal, good to have you back on board our sinking ship!
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This just came up, first I’d heard of it.
El Niño Could Be Gone By Spring, Experts Predict
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/el-nino-could-be-gone-by-spring-experts-predict
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Hit -23’F before sunrise this morning, -16’F a half hour after, and the bright blue sky mid-afternoon sunshine was a whopping 4’F. I know that 0’C is 32’F and -40’C is the same as -40’F, but I don’t know all the F to C conversions between these temps… Forgive my ignorance!
The high winds from the N/E coming down didn’t get this far west so it didn’t hit -30F to -40’F/C windchills. But they are blasting through everywhere east of me. Holy shit are they!
Having two huge and very cold storms running across the US the same week, one after another, with tornadoes smashing towns from Florida to the far north seems a bit extreme to me but wadda I know? I’m not wealthy or famous so I don’t count!
Also, I find it a bit suspicious that the massive bulge of that ‘Polar Vortex’ air mass and storms that is supposed to stay up in the Arctic is no longer being called ‘The Polar Vortex’ which sounded so ominous to so many people.
Instead they are now ‘calling’ it, and the storms as they smash across the country with hurricane-level wind and fucking tornadoes in January, by cute little names like they do with hurricanes/tropical cyclones.
I remember when tornadoes were NOT in the middle of the winter! Doesn’t anybody else?
And doesn’t this all sound a bit familiar?
Oh yeah, GLOBAL WARMING suddenly becoming climate ‘change’ out of fucking nowhere thanks to Frank Luntz the Wbush weenie PR speech writer thereby lessening the fear factor inherent in the first. Which I’m guessing somebody in the Biden crowd decided that, just like Wbush, they needed to lessen the impact but far more accurate label that was affecting the oil president’s popularity.
Oh wait, all of them are oil presidents. Look at their records not their lying speechwriting weenies. Or as you’d say down there, fookin bloody wankers!
sealintheSelkirks
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Talking aerosol masking and how 2023 BROKE ALL WEATHER MODELING. Oops. The models didn’t work for right now, where did this El Nino come from, even mentions geoengineering (which Schmidt lays out the absolute problems with that). Everything it seems is in a WTF moment. Head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies which primarily deals with atmospheres…
This is pretty good, makes a lot of sense, and Schmidt pretty much said WE ARE FUCKED.
How 2023 Broke Our Climate Models with Neil deGrasse Tyson & Gavin Schmidt 16minutes
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sealintheSelkirks
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Sam Carana
DIRE STATE OF CLIMATE
The first image shows that Arctic sea ice volume was at a record low for the day on August 17, 2025, as it has been for more than a year.
The second image shows in the left panel Arctic sea ice concentration on August 16, 2025, and in the right panel Arctic sea ice thickness on August 15, 2025.
In the panel on the right of the second image, melt pools may give the impression of zero thickness in areas close to the North Pole. Melt pools can indicate that rainfall and/or heavy melting is taking place.
The third image shows a forecast of the precipitable water anomaly for August 14, 2025 18Z.
From the post ‘Dire State of Climate’, at:
Arctic News: Dire State of Climate
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Sam Carana
THE NEXT EL NINO
Arctic sea ice volume is at a record daily low. It has been at a record daily low for well over a year. The first image shows Arctic sea ice volume through December 1, 2025.
Loss of Arctic sea ice volume can contribute to a huge rise in temperature as a result of methane erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. As Arctic sea ice shrinks in volume, its capacity shrinks to act as a buffer that consumes ocean heat entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean. As the buffer disappears, the temperature of the water can rise strongly and abruptly, causing heat to penetrate sediments that contain huge amounts of methane in the form of hydrates and free gas underneath hydrates. Heat penetrating such sediments can destabilize such hydrates, resulting in huge eruptions of methane.
Such an event could be triggered by wild weather swings resulting from higher temperatures that come with the next El Niño that may emerge and strengthen in the course of the year 2026.
The second image shows a NOAA update of temperature anomalies and forecasts in the Niño-3.4 region.
The third image, adapted from ECMWF, shows the ENSO anomalies and forecasts for developments through November 2026 in Niño3.4 (left panel) and in Niño1+2 (right panel), indicating that the next El Niño will emerge and strengthen in the course of 2026.
Moving from the depth of a La Niña to the peak of a strong El Niño in itself can make a difference in the global temperature of more than 0.5°C.
The methane danger is discussed in many earlier posts such as this one and is further illustrated by the fourth image that shows hourly average in situ methane measurements well above 2400 ppb (parts per billion).
The image is adapted from an image issued by NOAA December 1, 2025. The image shows methane recorded over the past few years at the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory (BRW), a NOAA facility located near Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, at 71.32 degrees North latitude.
From the post ‘The next El Nino’, at:
Arctic News: The next El Nino
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