Our Hot and Terrifying El Niño Summer
Suddenly climate change is everywhere all at once. Here is a little consolation.
If you, like me, took a little break from feeling climate change this spring (I was busy, okay??), our respite has ended. The planet is overheating.
July 3 was the hottest day ever recorded globally—and then that record was broken the very next day on July 4, and tied on July 5. June 2023 was the hottest June on record. Heat waves are smoldering around the world, including in the United States, Mexico, Iraq, Algeria, China, and the Philippines, with many breaking temperature records. More than 40 percent of the ocean is currently experiencing marine heat waves, the highest area since NOAA started record keeping in 1991.
In May carbon dioxide (a.k.a. fossil fuel emissions) in the atmosphere hit its highest level yet, averaging 424 parts per million.
Although climate impacts have become more visible and have ramped up over the past decade, what we’re seeing in this early summer feels like something of a different magnitude.
Here’s a little consolation: It’s important to keep in mind that we’re currently in an El Niño. El Niño is a somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which, for a period of months or years which occurs on a semi-regular cycle, cold water deep in the Pacific Ocean stops rising to the surface. The surface ocean grows hotter; more heat is released to the atmosphere; trade winds shift, altering weather patterns around the world; and ocean production, like plankton and fish populations, change accordingly. In short, Earth is hotter than normal during El Niño.
One of the wild things about being a speck of life on a planet that is itself a speck within a wobbly universe is that there are lots of things we don’t understand. When I first learned about El Niño in my early twenties, I dove deep into the scientific literature, seeking an explanation—someone somewhere must understand how this happens. Why does upwelling stop semi-regularly? How does a shift in the Pacific affect rainfall on the other side of the world? I discovered that no one knows. These are patterns that we observe and track; fishermen in the 1600s were aware of El Niño. But no one really knows what El Niño is or why it happens.
Right now we are experiencing El Niño in a new way: under warmer conditions created by the build-up of fossil fuel gases in the atmosphere. These two factors are stacked on top of each other and amplifying each other, and during the hottest season of the year in the Northern Hemisphere—and they will continue into the dog days of summer. So, expect more extremes to come.
Eventually El Niño will die down and we will get a respite. It could be months or years until that happens. Still, have hope that we are not on a linear path trending ever upwards with hotter temps every year or that this summer’s heat will be repeated annually or even worsened every year. As astrophysicists recently announced, the universe is a choppy sea and we experience waves in our climate, too.
It is a reminder, though, that climate change doesn’t act alone—whatever warming occurs will be amplified by El Niño in some years (and dampened in others by its cooling counterpart La Niña). These cycles will become more pronounced throughout our lives, and it’s possible they will interplay in unexpected ways.
What we are getting in this moment is a taste of the future. An extreme El Niño summer today is a normal summer later on if we continue to burn fossil energy at unsustainable rates.
That doesn’t mean these El Niño years should be disregarded as mere tastes of the future. This summer’s conditions will do extreme harm across the world; people are dying and more will die. People are suffering. Any terror we are feeling is real and to be taken seriously.
Terror is the body’s attempt to supercharge our system and get us to safety, usually through fleeing or fighting. But the danger we’re running from isn’t necessarily physical—it’s also social and political. In addition to the real physical threats of extreme heat the danger is fossil-fuel capitalism and the politicians and executives who oversee it at our expense.
So what would it look like to take this terror as a wake-up call? How do we stop today’s hot El Niño summer from becoming tomorrow’s norm? None of us can do it alone, but here are some places to start:
Assess your reality. It’s easy to let scary climate events wash over us and then continue life as normal. (Denial is a part of human nature!) So, as summer goes on, assess where you really are. Do you have what you need if this summer’s conditions became normal? Can you start planning to improve your lot? What kind of help do you need? If you haven’t taken this seriously yet, start.
Build your community. The #1 consolation I find in all this is that we are all in this together. I have nieces and nephews to protect, friends to support and to support me, communities to solve problems with. If and when disaster strikes, we will help each other. Invest in those connections today and build solidarity across typical divisions. Join a mutual aid group. If you have access to more resources than is typical, connect with people who have less.
Take political action. Learn about the energy mix in your town and insert yourself into the work to reduce fossil fuels. Find an organization you align with to work towards change together. Can you use this moment to make a statement? Call and write your representatives. Support policies that not only reduce fossil fuel use but also support vulnerable people, such as open migration policies and affordable housing. Stand up against fascism.
Use less energy. You know how to do this. Pick one new approach today and give it a whirl.
Grow more plants.
Enjoy your life now. The future has always been uncertain and nothing is ever promised. Love up on your people, have gratitude, take care of yourself mentally and physically. Get off social media and do things that make you happy. (If social media makes you happy then stay there!)
And make sure to stay cool.
What the scientists are saying
“It’s so far out of line of what’s been observed that it’s hard to wrap your head around,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior research scientist at the University of Miami. “It doesn’t seem real.”
“It’s not a record to celebrate and it won’t be a record for long, with northern hemisphere summer still mostly ahead and El Niño developing,” said Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in the UK. “It just shows we have to stop burning fossil fuels, not in decades, now. This day is just a number, but for many people and ecosystems it’s a loss of life and livelihood.”
“There does seem to be this unusual convergence of warming factors right now,” said Gabriel Vecchi, a climate scientist at Princeton. “But this is all happening in a world where we’ve been increasing greenhouse gases for the past 150 years, and that really loads the dice and makes it much more likely that we’re going to get pushed into record-breaking territory.”
"Unfortunately, it promises to only be the first in a series of new records set this year as increasing emissions of [carbon dioxide] and greenhouse gases coupled with a growing El Niño event push temperatures to new highs," said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.
"Climate extremes are becoming harsher and grimmer by ravaging lives and livelihoods, disproportionately impacting the poorest and most vulnerable communities and contributing to gender-based violence against girls and women," Abinash Mohanty, sector head of climate change and sustainability at IPE-Global.
Sources: NYTimes; CNN; Reuters; DW
What I’m reading
It’s not just heat: Many Earth systems are undergoing extremes right now. “June 2023 may be remembered as the start of a big change in the climate system, with many key global indicators flashing red warning lights amid signs that some systems are tipping toward a new state from which they may not recover.” (Inside Climate News)
Climate migration isn’t bad in itself. (What’s bad is how some people (e.g. fascists) respond to it.) “Climate-induced migration will often be traumatic. Yet it will also be an essential tool for adapting to a warming planet. And it may have some positive side-effects.” (The Economist)
Yikes: “Financial institutions often did not understand the models they were using to predict the economic cost of climate change and were underestimating the risks of temperature rises.” Time to fix that? (Financial Times)
There isn't really anywhere to run to. “Canada appeared to be better positioned than countries closer to the Equator; warming could allow for longer farming seasons and make more places attractive to live in as winters grow less harsh. But it is becoming clear that increasing volatility—ice storms followed by fires followed by intense rains and now hurricanes on the Atlantic coast, uncommon so far north—wipes out any potential gains.” (New York Times)