Weather Is Absolutely Insane Right Now
The climate disaster has arrived
Mondays are for public lands on this newsletter. But there’s a bigger story we need to talk about this week, because it’s completely intertwined with how we use those lands now, their future, and pretty much everything else on this planet. And that story is climate change.
Rate Of Warming Accelerating
A new study published by researchers in Germany suggests the rate of global warming, “has accelerated significantly.”
The paper’s plain language summary reads:
“The rise in global temperature has been widely considered to be quite steady for several decades since the 1970s. Recently, however, scientists have started to debate whether global warming has accelerated since then. It is difficult to be sure of that because of natural fluctuations in the warming rate, and so far no statistical significance of an acceleration (increase in warming rate) has been demonstrated. In this study we subtract the estimated influence of El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and solar variations from the data, which makes the global temperature curve less variable, and it then shows a statistically significant acceleration of global warming since about the year 2015. Warming proceeding faster is not unexpected by climate models, but it is a cause of concern and shows how insufficient the efforts to slow and eventually stop global warming under the Paris Climate Accord have so far been.”
This chart shows the rate of increase for the global average temperature. The researchers suggest that the blue line most accurately represents their findings.
Of particular interest to this article is the effect created by removing statistical noise created by El Niño and La Niña weather events, which I’ll get to in the conclusion. For now, chew on this for a minute:
“In conclusion, our analysis of GMST data after removing the best estimate of the influence of three natural variability factors reduces the noise level sufficiently to reveal a large and significant acceleration of global warming, regardless which statistical method is used. Note that the adjustments reduce the global temperature in 2024 and minimally in 2023 by removing effects of El Niño as well as the solar maximum. The evidence is thus strong that the statistical significance of warming acceleration is not due to outlier years in 2023 and 2024, but that global temperature has departed from its previous path since around 2015.”
Hawaii’s Kona Low
A series of slow moving storms are dumping feet of rain across the Hawaiian islands right now, leading to extreme flooding. Estimates mid-disaster already putting damage totals in excess of $1 billion, and that number is likely to climb significantly once things dry out, and officials can actually get into impacted areas.
That number is significant for a reason: the accelerating number of weather-related disasters totaling at least $1 billion (inflation adjusted) is possibly the best lens we have for getting our heads around the ways climate change is impacting humanity.
In 1980, there were seven total weather-related disasters in the United States that totaled at least $1 billion in damage, with the total amount of damage pegged at around $30 billion. In 2024, there were 24 such disasters totaling $182.7 billion. Again, all these numbers are inflation adjusted so they can be directly compared.
In 2023, the Lahaina Fire caused $5.5 billion in damage to western Maui.
Another interesting threat here is the number of impacted families asking for help via GoFundMe. Last year, I explored the problem inherent in disaster victims seeking aid through crowdsourced donations, even as that practice becomes more and more common as the Trump administration continues its efforts to erode the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FEMA is an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, which had been run as part of a love triangle involving a disgraced former governor, a disgraced former Trump campaign manager, and hundreds of millions of dollars in missing taxpayer funds, and which is now run by a disgraced former MMA fighter who Bernie Sanders once had to stop from getting into a fistfight on the Senate floor. That agency is also impacted by the ongoing partial shutdown of the federal government due to a conflict between Democrats and Republicans over funding masked government thugs set loose on our streets for the purpose of murdering American citizens. If that disagreement is not resolved, FEMA’s longterm disaster recovery funding may not be able to help victims impacted by this series of storms in Hawaii.
Nebraska’s Worst Fire Season, Ever, In Winter
One of the insane things about our current moment is that we’re all focussed on the dramas unfolding in Washington, the Persian Gulf, and on Truth Social, rather than the fact that our agricultural heartland is burning down, in the middle of March.
All in, the fires which started on March 12, were caused by high winds and dry conditions, and have so far burned over 800,000 acres, making them the worst in Nebraska history. Now partially contained, officials remain worried that high temperatures and extreme winds could make more fires likely this week, with relative humidity falling as low as 11 percent on Wednesday.
Current versus historic western snowpack. Graphic: USDA
The Melting West
It was 79 degrees here in Bozeman on Friday, the hottest every temperature recorded in March. Elsewhere, records fell from California to Arizona to Texas to Canada, and in over 1,000 other locations.
That marked the end of a winter in which we’ve seen some of the lowest snowfall totals on record, again across the entire American West.
How bad is that? According to USDA snowpack data peak snowpack began falling in late February, a full month before it usually does, and currently stands at record lows.
Adventure photographer Nate Luebbe summed it all up best in a Threads post: “80% of the meltwater for the western US just simply won’t exist this summer.”
Everyone is pretty hesitant to speculate on what that may mean, simply because the situation is so dire. But if you value things like fish populations, irrigation water, or your house not burning down, you’re probably going to experience some real bummers this year.
Sea Level Rise Underestimated
The earth isn’t a perfect sphere, and natural factors like currents and wind can cause ocean water to pile up in certain areas, all while variable weather compounds the challenges of measuring exact sea levels. But as technology improves, so does our ability to filter out that noise.
And that’s just the case with global sea level estimates, which in some cases such as the Mekong Delta, may be been estimated with a margin for error larger than a full century of sea level rise.
What’s that mean? We could see greater impacts in some coastal regions, sooner than previously expected.
Combine that underestimation with the accelerating pace of warming, and all our numbers for worst case scenarios this century could be drastically low.
Current vs historic sea temperatures at the Scripps Pier in La Jolla. Graphic: UCSD
West Coast Sea Temperatures Are HOT
Luebbe also points out that current sea surface temperatures in southern California are, “already higher than the mean summer MAXIMUM.”
“A massive marine heatwave has dominated waters off the West Coast since last summer,” explains NOAA. “This marks only the third time on record that such a large section of the coastal ocean has remained so warm for so long—particularly into winter months—without it being an El Niño. We are in uncharted conditions.”
“Godzilla” El Niño Inbound
The crazy thing about all of this is that it’s occurring during a La Niña cycle, in which water temperatures in the Pacific around the equator are cooler than normal. That typically suppresses temperatures and extreme weather in this country. El Niños, in which that area of the ocean are hotter than normal, typically do the opposite.
“Climate models are signaling that a particularly powerful El Niño is brewing, likely to form in the second half of the year. If it takes hold, scientists say it could be the strongest we’ve seen in at least a decade,” explains The Inertia.
Hype around the event is growing so much that some have begun referring to it as a “Godzilla” event. If things continue as expected, 2027 will almost certainly become the hottest year on record, potentially eclipsing 2024, in which the global average temperature reached 1.55 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial.
As bad as the weather is right now, it may just be a preview of conditions as we move through summer and fall.
Top photo: NWS
A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, and prepare for real life.
I can attest to the heat here in the Phoenix area! It is really hitting us hard at a time we never have gone so high to 100+ before in March. It seems that whenever the weather changes drastically like it is now that people get on board with the truth of our changing climate. Add to that, the extreme drought we are in and it is a recipe for disaster.
I read in this area extensively. I helped my company write a climate adaptation plan for the Hupa Nation last year, and we did a big dive into the forecasting data. A lot of scientists think we are approaching, or at, a tipping point. One big driver is that the Arctic is warming about 4X faster than the global average. There is a huge amount of methane trapped in polar soils, and it is being released faster and faster as the permafrost melts. In the short term, methane is about 80X more powerful than CO2 in terms of insulating the atmosphere. This, and the potential for melting of methane clathrates, is what I call the Kraken. Reducing emissions is not enough, everyone needs to think about adaptation and resiliency. I also think its likely that geoengineering is going to take place in the next ten years. A lot of climate scientists are leery - it's never been tried globally, and there could be severe unintended consequences. But a rogue state, like Pakistan, could undertake it on their own. Fully one-third of Pakistan flooded just a couple of years ago, and they want to avoid another devastation. So think about how you and your community can adapt, even baby steps can help.