Incoming El Nino: Implications and Action

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Hey folks, it's Emily with AR recording on the morning of May 7th in a strange light. Lot of sun and clouds today. Many of you have been writing me El Nino questions. Jason B asked me my thoughts on this article which quotes Hansen who says quote even a moderately strong El Nino within the next 12 to 18 months could push the average global temperature about 3° F or 1.7° C above the pre-industrial level. I would certainly agree with Hansen that we are looking at a substantial predicted push in average global temps. If we end up looking at 1.7C averages on a monthly basis, I would be grateful we met or exceeded that level of warming in the 2324 El Nino event. To me, the major issue is that we are moving beyond the point of looking at monthly averages as a primary source of meaningful information because of system level change. The major point in this article to note is that possibility of climactic phase change. I'm highlighting that point in the Gizmo article as I note that there were concerns in 2024 that the last El Nino event we experienced pushed Earth's climate systems into phase change. That was not fringe internet concern positions. Space change was being discussed at major conferences organized to try and understand what was going on with the 23 change in pattern we all experienced.

[00:01:40]When I read in the article this idea that maybe we're going into phase change, I think it might be relevant to examine the evidence that we are currently in phase change. When we look at the meteorological winter we just experienced, we saw a sharp divide in the US with the west experiencing a quite abnormally warm winter and the east unusual cold. When we look at snowpack trends in the west and this uh NRCS resource that I have up here is in the video description if you want to explore in more depth. A lot of these red points on the map which indicate less than 50% of normal snowpack are in the very very low category. There's quite a few zeros on here. There's quite a few sub 25s on here. I think we should consider the possibility that this is phase change. When we, you, me, AR, our community, scientific community, when we studied the climate science back from 2021, there was evidence that much of the west would gradually shift from snowpackfed to rainwater dominated type hydraologies. Those messages were strengthened from the NCA4 to the NCA5 between updates of the National Climate Assessment.

[00:03:00]In much of the west, would you say we are in that transition or would you say that that transition has happened?

[00:03:10]As a general comment, thinking about phase change versus gradual transition.

[00:03:15]I think it is worth considering that most earth and climate science is focused on the physics and the chemistry of the earth. Less is focused founded in the biology of the earth of the living nature of our planet.

[00:03:30]When we hit thresholds that are critical to life, the responses we tend to see in biological systems are more in the phase change than the gradual change category.

[00:03:41]It's not going to be a shocker to anyone who has been following this channel that I have a strong interest in looking ahead. But I think this is an important moment to take a second and check in right where we are. We are currently experiencing the kind of ecosystem level impacts that don't just even out in a year-on-year trend analysis. The change is not out ahead of us. The change is now. There are ways Earth and climate science helped us understand how this change would come. There are ways Earth and climate science can help us understand how matters are likely to proceed. You know, as we experience these past few years, I think we can acknowledge that there are things the greater scientific community got right and got wrong about how this change would come.

[00:04:28]Engaging in that argument may be less valuable to our understanding and our response than taking a moment before we lose ourselves in shifting margins of normaly.

[00:04:43]We're in a very different world than we were in 2021. I think there's a broad tendency to want to assume to deeply want to assume contemporary continuity with that world. Gradual trends, not phase change. You just have a moment over the edge. You just peek over and you come back. But that's not how it went. We went over to C on daily temps, not on any kind of larger averages. But it happened. It happened a few days in the fall of 23, a few days in the spring of 24, and it turned out I think that tipping point was for Sirius. It seems like we tipped. When I think about tipping points, the mental image that comes to mind for me is a plate spinning on a stick. That old acrobatic trick. We hit the tipping point. The plate fell down. It broke. And the world is different now.

[00:05:35]Today is May 7th. May is mental health awareness month in the United States.

[00:05:39]Over the last couple of years, I had a loved one experience onset of serious mental illness. I've been living that reality in this time of change. My whole understanding of the fragile sparks and fat that make us who we are has changed going through this experience. I'm very grateful for everything the AR community has given me these years. In my darkest moments, you have been there for me.

[00:06:04]Through these years, the AR community has supported my family, has given me comfort, and more importantly, knowledge, and has cared about my well-being. Among the family members and loved ones of people who live with severe mental illness, I am sure I'm not alone in having experienced what one might call ecosystem level change. I want to acknowledge mental health awareness month this May which was established to reduce stigma and promote understanding around mental health conditions. I put NAMI up on the screen here because they have a lot of resources for people at the center of the circle of care as well as resources for families, loved ones, and caregivers. How does that connect to climate? I think it connects to the type of resilience we need. Resilience that accepts change. Not that negotiates with change. Not sliding the scale of what is normal, kicking the can down the road.

[00:07:01]No, not pretending things are okay because you can look back in the past and they were okay at one point. We need to actually pay attention to our environment. On climate, there's no going back. Things are different. The coming El Nino is likely cause all kinds of bad problems and you could spend many hours reading about them and worrying about them before it happens on the internet. But I don't know if that's the best response and I don't know if it's actually the right causality thinking of El Nino causing these things. I think we need to look at the system. The causality is in the system. El Nino is just a description of a system expression. We got to get deeper as we consider causality. The deep causes lie in our warming ocean which has absorbed just incredible amount of heat much more than Earth's land masses over the last couple of decades. That heat is in there. That's the causal element.

[00:08:04]We're living in the time of change.

[00:08:06]We're living in the consequences of all that stored heat in the ocean which is going to have impacts related to El Nino which is going to have impacts related to AOC and PMAC systems.

[00:08:19]AR will be continuing to look for change indicators helping us to look at what kind of edge conditions to expect as we move into the future. this hot season here in North America. I think that it's good to review what are your hot season extension predictions for 2C. You can review that here on Jackie Ryan's wonderful imaging of the NCA5 data sets.

[00:08:45]To figure out how much of a hot season extension your county is projecting from like a 90s style summer, you're going to add together three layers. your number of days over 95, your number of days over 100, and your number of days over 105. So that'll give you the total length and sort of the shape of the intensity of a projected 2C hot season increase. I know it's a little annoying that you have to do math, but that's how those layers of information were laid out in the NCI 5 data sets. They were separated into three layers of heat in the West. I'm kind of worried about power generation because your hydroelect electric situations in the Colorado basin are already being impacted. The most urgent resilience priority at this time for almost all of us should be to solve for late season heat. I think that we could be looking at a really hot August with this pattern of El Nino onset and that heat may be potentially in the context of utility fragility.

[00:09:48]We've got the NERC issuing pretty high level warnings about grid stability.

[00:09:53]That's good. They're doing that, issuing this alert. That means they're responding to change. It's better that we see the alert than that we're pretending that things are fine. In the AR community, I know a lot of us are already focused on action, working the problem on your local resilience priorities. If that's you, if you're feeling all right on the edge of the problem, you know what 2C heat is going to look like in your area in the summer.

[00:10:20]You know, I want to say when I was learning more about this whole problem, the shape of the change, a big grief part for me was accepting how much normal we were going to lose. Like the average, the center was just not holding. We were looking at a future that was no middles and all edges.

[00:10:45]If you are feeling all right on the edges projected for your area, I think what we've got to do is keep work in the middle, cultivate community, help others, look for ways to broaden solutions.

[00:11:02]We are always going to be finding more edges. We're always going to be reaching for more. And the environment is going to be throwing more edges at us sometimes very unexpected.

[00:11:13]It's not just like okay. It's important to find ways to get yourself working on the center. That's the place where you can stand where you can preserve what you are as an individual, as a family, as a community. For those of us who have been on this journey for a while, and I'm so grateful for how many of you have been, I want to let you know we just passed 15K subscribers. I think it's cool that so many people are interested in the work we're doing here. For those of us who have spent these years putting resilience into practice, getting those supports in place for edge conditions, I hope you can join me in taking a moment to acknowledge the work we've done. I do hope that our work will be of help to ourselves and to others to all kinds of living things. We can stay reaching for edges out of habit. We must not neglect the center. I hope you'll join me and take some time to acknowledge what you have now and where you are. I'm heading to New Mexico soon to take part in some resilience conversations. I'm honored to have been invited. It's going to be good to have some time to think in the desert.

[00:12:29]The signs are clear on what we ought to do for now. We should not expect a return to normal. What those of us can cultivate within the edges, that's where we can make life worth living. That's where I think we are in this journey now. And we'll keep looking ahead, doing what we can to find the right path.

[00:12:49]Folks, thanks for watching. I'm self-producing this video today. So, I'm sorry there's no like nice credits, but I want to thank AR's donors, volunteers, everyone spreading the word online, and everyone doing the work on the ground.

[00:13:03]AR is a 501c3. To support our work or to become a website member with access to my office hours and exclusive content, please check out www.americanresiliency.org.

[00:13:16]Thanks for spending some time with me.

[00:13:18]I'll look forward to talking with you all again