Via Rolf Oldejans
The bed of the Danube on August 21, 2026, near the city of Ruse (Bulgaria). Not quite completely dry — see the trickle in the distance. Extraordinary. A result of the Europe-wide drought. I wonder how many thousands of years it's been since it last looked like this.
From Zack Labe
The average global temperature so far this year (for the January-August period) is now up to the 2nd warmest on record since the start of this dataset...This data is using NOAAGlobalTempv6.1.0: www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/lan...
[Relative to 1900–2000 averages]
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| Fiercer wildfires in drying forests are occurring globally, as seen in this image from Indonesia in August 2026. Photograph: Mast Irham/EPA |
From The Guardian
Rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels are transforming the world’s forests, wetlands and tundra to the point they are releasing emissions that could further worsen global heating by as much as 30%, a new study has found.
As the world heats up, permafrost in the high latitudes is thawing, fiercer wildfires are burning in drying forests and wetlands and lakes are warming. All of these changes are themselves causing the release of planet-heating methane and carbon dioxide locked in trees and soils, therefore worsening the climate crisis, the paper states.
While scientists have long known of these “feedback loops” that amplify the impact of direct pollution from burning coal, oil and gas, the emissions from natural sources are largely unaccounted for in climate projections.
This additional heating is, however, significant, researchers found, with emissions from natural sources set to amplify global heating by 20% to 30% by the end of this century. This would add an estimated 0.2C to 0.4C to the global average temperature by this time, depending on the overall action taken by countries to combat the climate crisis.
Even small fractions of temperature change across the global climate can greatly change the risk of severe and deadly heatwaves, floods, drought and other impacts.
The United Nations last week conceded the international pact to constrain the global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will be breached in the next few years, causing climate impacts such as this summer’s record heatwaves and wildfires to “strike faster, hit harder and last longer”.
Yet the increase in the world’s fever will likely be even larger than most projections currently account for, the new research warns, as they do not factor in the methane and CO2 that will spew from permafrost, wetlands, freshwaters and wildfires – the four areas the paper analyzed.
“This hidden multiplier is missing from the models guiding climate policy, so those models are likely underestimating how much warming is coming – and overestimating how much carbon we can still afford to emit,” said Sam Abernethy, a scientist at Spark Climate Solutions who led the research, published in Environmental Research Letters.
The disruption of the world’s carbon cycles is now being seen in “real time”, said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University scientist and study co-author. “The results are a wake-up call, and it’s imperative that they be included in the next generation of climate policies,” he added. “Failure to do so will make meeting the world’s climate goals less and less likely.”
There has been longstanding concern that should global heating melt enough of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, thaw enough permafrost, warp crucial ocean currents and turn the Amazon rainforest into a savannah, the world will career past a series of catastrophic tipping points where the climate system spins wildly outside any sort of restraining human influence.
The planet is getting closer to such a “point of no return” where this runaway global heating becomes reality, a separate study earlier this year warned.
This latest paper makes clear that action by countries to cut fossil fuel pollution will still lessen the amount of additional emissions that come from landscapes. Under the most optimistic climate scenario where emissions are cut quickly, natural sources will add 0.2C of warming, the paper found. Under a worst-case higher emissions scenario, 0.4C will probably be added.
Current policies put in place by governments are likely to see the global temperature rise to 2.6C above pre-industrial times, according to Climate Action Tracker. This will probably cause severe disruption and hardship to billions of people through sea level rise, crop losses and other consequences.
“One of the most troubling aspects of climate change is that warming can trigger natural processes that cause still more warming,” said Bill Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who helped author the research earlier this year on runaway heating. He was not involved in the new paper, which he called “important”.
“This does not mean that a Hothouse Earth trajectory is inevitable, but it provides another warning about the possibility of reinforcing feedbacks that can amplify the warming humans initiate,” he said.
“The paper also reminds us why every fraction of a degree matters. The more we warm the planet, the more we risk activating natural processes that add still more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This makes rapid reductions in fossil fuel emissions even more urgent.”
These feedbacks are causing accelerated heating.
Meanwhile, Australia is approving new and expanded coal and gas extraction, the US is cancelling wind farms and opposes EVs, the UK wants to licence new North Sea oil exploration, Europe is dragging its feet on the transition to EVs, and China, Indonesia and India are still building new coal power stations. Politicians clearly do not accept the urgency of the change needed.
From Lee West
The hottest summer in American history is no longer 1936; it is now officially 2026. #ClimateChange
What is albedo? It's another word for reflectivity, i.e., the degree to which incoming sunlight and heat is reflected back into space. The higher it is, the more is reflected (keeping the Earth cooler), the lower it is, the more is absorbed (making the Earth hotter). Clouds and snow increase albedo (reflectivity), dark surfaces reduce it. Aerosols, mostly from sulphur dioxide, high in the atmosphere, reflect income infra-red solar radiation, increasing albedo, and one explanation for the recent decline in albedo is, ironically, recent changes in regulations requiring ships to use low-sulphur diesel.
From Prof Eliot Jacobson
As of the latest June data from CERES, the 12-month running average for Earth's albedo is continuing its run towards a new record low. Data source: ceres-tool.larc.nasa.gov/ord-tool/jsp...
From The Guardian
The El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”, the UN has said. The event is near certain to shatter temperature records, according to the latest forecasts.
The El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years and will pile extra heat into an atmosphere where temperatures are already rising rapidly due to global heating. The combination means 2027 is set to “blow apart” the record and be the hottest year ever recorded.
The rising heat from the El Niño is already having impacts, from worsening wildfires in Indonesia to the weakening of vital monsoon rains in India. The impacts will spread globally, from greater fire risk in Australia to more intense floods in South America. The World Food Programme said in August that the El Niño was likely to push about 50 million people into acute hunger.
The climate crisis, caused by pollution from fossil fuels, is already supercharging extreme weather and killing people, with the most extreme heatwave ever recorded hitting Europe this summer and leading to at least 35,000 deaths. The El Niño will ratchet up the impacts even further, with the scale of the event having been described as “truly mind-blowing” and a “Godzilla-level” event.
El Niño is a natural climate cycle where wind changes over the Pacific lead to rising ocean temperatures and the transfer of huge amounts of heat to the atmosphere. The most recent data, from Monday, shows the temperature of the ocean at the heart of El Niño at 2.6C above the 30-year average. That is already close to the highest anomaly ever recorded in the satellite data era, 3.1C in 2015, with months to go before the peak is expected.
That peak is forecast to reach about 4C in November, according to the average of 14 different models. Data from analysis of corals, tree rings and historical documents suggest no El Niño has reached this level in the last millennium, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate analyst. Any temperature anomaly above 0.5C is classed as an El Niño.
A further concern is that recent research shows global heating is now intensifying El Niño cycles, which then in turn intensify the impacts of the climate crisis.
“El Niño is being supersized before our eyes,” said UN secretary general António Guterres. “The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up. The world is in the danger zone of extreme weather. The race now is between rising risks and our commitment to take climate action and protect people. We must win that race.”The WMO El Niño updates are the world’s most authoritative forecasts and are based on a consensus of models from climate prediction centres around the world. The latest update, published on Thursday, said the El Niño was firmly established and would intensify into a “very strong event” in the coming months, with “big impacts” including floods, drought and extreme heat continuing well into 2027.
In some areas, subsurface ocean temperatures were an extraordinary 8C above average during July and early August.
Chris Jaccarini, of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit in the UK, said: “Extreme [weather] around the world has driven up food prices, hitting the poorest hardest. This is not just the food we import, but also what we grow at home.
“After five heatwaves and widespread drought, British arable farmers are now facing the worst harvest on record in 2026. And yet, without action, these could be the good years. Unless we rapidly cut emissions and strengthen resilience, climate change impact will continue to worsen with El Niño turbocharging the trend every few years.”
Hat tip to Hal
#ClimateEmergency. #JohnScheve: “.. The strongest #ElNiño ..was 8 to 11 zettajoules ..this El Niño could reach .. 38 zettajoules .. 4 times the ..heat content.. The #GlobalExtremeWeather impacts.. catastrophic.. We are in #RunawayWarming.” www.facebook.com/share/p/1DWo...
2027 could reach or exceed 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
From Stefan Rahmstorf
Mountain glaciers are losing mass increasingly fast world-wide over the past 75 years in response to #globalwarming. This and permafrost thawing can destabilize mountain sides and cause glacial collapse and flash floods. Graph: World Glacier Monitoring Service wgms.ch/global-glaci...
The evidence is unequivocal: the world is getting hotter, and it's accelerating.
From Zack Labe
🚨 The last three months have averaged the highest global mean sea surface temperature on record relative to any other May-June-July period since records started in 1850... Data from the new @noaa.gov ERSSTv6. 🌊
El Niño will push these temperatures even higher over the next year,
Yet we still do not act. We should:
✔️ Accelerate the phase-out of coal and gas in electricity generation ASAP. ✔️ Ban the import and production of new petrol-/diesel-only vehicles ✔️Ban oil/gas building heating ✔️Tax imports from countries which won't do the same.
From Scott Horton
According to ERA5 global sea surface temperatures have set a new all time record. This is likely the warmest sea surface temperatures have been in at least the last 125,000 years. What’s more concerning is this will likely rise further in the coming months.
And this is before El Niño's impact reaches its maximum next year, which could be another 2 degrees. We face climate catastrophe, and we don't act.
21.5c in the North Sea in 2026 INCREDIBLE #ClimateCrisis #Metacrisis
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| My translation: North Sea never so warm before Measurements at the Light Island Goeree since 1984 21.5 degrees C on 17 August 2026 |
From Zeke Hausfather
I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures Рon the back of a record-smashing El Ni̱o event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.
We're racing towards 2 degrees increase in temperatures since the 19th century. And look how bad things already are. The rate of increase is accelerating.
Yet our politicians and CEOs lie to us, pretend to care, but take no action to slash emissions.
From Nahel Belgherze
Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.
We face a climate catastrophe, and politicians, CEOs and the "elite" do nothing to slash emissions, and in many cases actually attempt to reverse climate-saving initiatives.
A clear and excellent explanation of El Niño, and why it's likely to be so bad this time. Ben Miles is usually quite optimistic. This time, he struggles to find something hopeful to say. The world faces famine and climate disaster. Are politicians planning for this? Are you? And what are we doing to reduce global heating, which is making this worse?
From Nahel Belgherze
France could record its hottest day ever in the coming days, exceeding the 30°C mark nationwide for the first time on record. A truly historic heatwave is on the way.
[Previous highs:]
The Top 5 : 1) 29.40°C 25 July 2019 2) 29.35°C 5 August 2003 3) 28.88°C 9 August2003 4) 28.72°C 24 July 2019 5) 28.69°C 10 August 2003
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| Note that these are daily averages, not peaks. |
Temperatures are rising by at the minimum 0.2 degrees C per decade, though over the last 15 years that has accelerated to 0.3 degrees C. Even if we cut emissions by 70%, temperatures will still be rising by 0.1 degrees C per decade. Better than nothing, but still not good enough. We need to do better.
