The worst El Niño in recorded history is brewing — here’s how governments must prepare

This is Zeke Hausfather title from his Nature Paper. Its not what you are suggesting.

He posts a map of inpacts too.

Greetings from my layover in Hong Kong,

Needful to say, there is no chance of stabilizing realclimates without acknowledging the essential role of functional hydrological catchments in providing regional precipitation cascades, normal cloud cover, runoff buffering, soil carbon accumulation/erosion control, and buffering against temperature and hydrological extremes. More speculativery, there is very likely a critical role in controlling synoptic patterns and global circulation. I commend Tomas for the ongoing interest in the subject from the perspective of co2 climate sensitivity, and I still fail to understand how naysayers and active deniers of hydrolical interference are participating in generating positive outcomes for climate or science. I recommend more productive use of ones time is a more healthy contribution rather than obsessively refreshing this page day after day offering only relentless opposition to scientific investigation of the subject. It is obviously anti science and is frankly a climate denial showing all the same symptoms. These include saying the effects are small, that there is nothing to be done, and/or that scientific research should cease and or be defunded.

Cheers

KM: I donate generously. Brings it’s own rewards.

Major Update 2026-08-22

Useful entirely new Chapter 9 exploring what Earth’s declining albedo may mean for the near future of our
civilization—and, more personally, for your own well-being.

See – Chpt. 9 Declining Earth albedo amplifies global warming

A small change in planetary albedo can perturb the Earth’s radiation balance as much as the radiative
forcing from greenhouse gases. ~Hansen et al. (2005, 2011)

Recent years have brought a succession of record-breaking global temperatures and growing evidence that
the rate of global warming has accelerated (Foster and Rahmstorf , 2011, 2026).

pp 146-147
9.9 Conclusions
CERES observations reveal a substantial decline in planetary albedo since about 2010. The corresponding
increase in absorbed shortwave radiation is of order 1 W m−2 and has accumulated into a large Earth-
system heat anomaly, predominantly stored in the ocean.

The central result is therefore narrower, but physically consequential:
The observed post-2010 decline in planetary albedo is of sufficient magnitude, persistence, and timing
to amplify recent global warming and is energetically consistent with the post-2013 acceleration of
GMST.

–
See also very good chpt on AI implications and dangers. incl. AI Agentic Networks
pp 274
Chapter 17 – AI and the Breakdown of Human Control Systems

“Each world view contains gaps, though for those who have formed it they are unnoticeable. . . . Ignorance about ignorance accompanies cognition uncompromisingly. ”
– Stanisław Lem, Golem XIV, Lecture on cognition; page number varies by edition (Lem, 1981)

The danger does not lie in “malevolent machines,” but in our willingness to delegate agency without
foresight, guardrails, or accountability. In practice, those who wield real power are often greedy,
myopic, narcissistic, occasionally foolish, and at times openly antisocial or malicious. The private AI
systems built for such actors are trained to advance their priorities, not the public interest.
—

KM : Many are now aware of insiders reporting publicly and privately that systemic AI is more serious and malevolent by the day.

Piotr, my point was about conservatives. The oligarchy is largely the dominant high wealth group, and does not equal conservatives. It includes both conservatives and liberals, and might in fact be dominated by liberals as they tend to dominate the high income earning states in America. So you may be conflating politics with the wealthy oligarchy. So wrong premise on this occasion.

But the top down power grab by the oligarchy sounds correct. And a similar thing has also happened with the Conservative leaning Trump government. The two things intersect but arent the same.

All I was really trying to say was innate genetic leanings make it hard for conservatives to embrace liberal ideas, and vice versa, although not impossible. See my response above to BPL.

Like Barton, I don’t agree with Nigel “that conservatives have reached the limits of what social change they can endure”.

Instead it was a deliberate counterattack by the Oligarchy against the social progress threatening their power, Their genius was to use the negative effects of THEIR actions
to defend …. THEIR future continuations of the same actions: first, to maximize their profits, the Rich destroyed the middle class by automation and offshoring their jobs, and then redirected the rage and resentment of that impoverished middle class toward – the opponents of their (the Rich ) opponents, in particular”
– trade unions, as higher wages means lower profits for the Oligarchy
– challenging the tax cuts for the rich and corporations,
– politicians questioning the system in which the rich own the politicians via the campaign funding
– environmentalism – which should have been a domain of conservatives (“conserving what has been before”, with Theodore Roosevelt being the person who have done more for the conservation in the US and for national parks'”; or with Nixon creating EPA and massively expanding the LBJ’s Clean Air Act – is now called a communism (the reason conserving environment and mitigating AGW – cuts into the profit margin of the super-rich.

For a more comprehensive effect, the economic targets were supplemented by the culture wars, the Rich took advantage of racisms and/or religion to set first the Tea Party and Moral Majority, and then QAnon and MAGA after
– the Blacks
– the immigrants, but only the non-White ones (that’s why Trump calls for Canada to become a 51st state, but not Mexico)
– Muslims

All this has been additionally strengthened by the outside bad actors
– Russia supporting Trump and deliberately inflaming the divisions in the US,
– Russia’s funding and/or political support for far right parties and leaders in Europe
(Orban, Farage, Le Pen, AfD) AND the praise and/or defense of the same from Trump, Musk, Rubio or Vance (Trump: “they call me Mr. Brexit over there”)

And the you add Musk and other Tech Bros using their social media to create and amplify conflict, reinforce the right and create for them echo-chambers where they are not exposed to the differing viewpoints. And with the AI – create the distrust to everything we see – and drown the truth in the noise – with an antivaxer plumber given the same platform, and thanks to AI help, the same weight – as world’s top epidemiologist.

So no, it’s not a grass-root growth of MAGA populism and their European far-right counterparts – its has been seeded and cultivated from the top.

In Re to Nigelj, 19 Sep 2026 at 4:49 PM,

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/koonins-temperature-of-the-lol-stratosphere/#comment-851134

and

20 Sep 2026 at 7:09 PM,

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/koonins-temperature-of-the-lol-stratosphere/#comment-851148

Hello Nigel,

It appears that my comments caused some confusion which I would like to correct.

1) Definitions
Nabil is correct that closed thermodynamic system does not exchange matter with its surrounding but can exchange energy, while isolated system does not exchange matter nor energy. At the very start of my exchange with him, I incorrectly used the term “closed” instead of “isolated” for the approach used by Nabil with respect to Earth and its alleged warming by heat produced by fossil fuel combustion.

2) How it could have happened that Nabil treats Earth as an isolated thermodynamic system and still believes that he treats it (correctly) as a closed system?
I think that based on Nabil’s responses to raised objections, I finally grasped that his confusion may be somewhat more complex and deeper-rooted than I thought originally. My present understanding to him is as follows:

(i) Nabil is aware that Earth receives energy from Sun and emits it to the Universe. He, however, assumes that if we investigate a human perturbation inflicted to this steady state, we can consider all natural energy flows as constant, and he further assumes that the remaining anthropogenic forcing directly converts in the “excess energy” that finally manifests as an observable warming.

(ii) So far so good, this approach formally resembles the standard “bookkeeping” of the global warming, wherein the observed rise in Earth’s heat content (measured by Argo buoys as ocean heat content (OHC), combined with latent heat calculated from the observed ice melting) fits with time integral of the Earth energy imbalance (EEI) measured by CERES satellites.

(iii) There are, however, two crucial differences between Nabil’s approach and correct energy accounting:
a) Nabil arbitrarily excluded key forcings that may be suspected as anthropogenic (like changing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, changing atmosphere pollution with aerosols, changing surface albedo, changing cloud cover and/or changing latent heat flux) from consideration, as if they all were either non-existent or could be also considered constant. This way, he obtained, as the sole remaining option, the tiny forcing of the order 0.01 W/m2, corresponding to the heat flux caused by anthropogenic combustion of carbon-containing fuels (wherein this combustion comprises both fossil fuels as well as biomass considered to disappear because of land deforestation);
b) Nabil assumes that this forcing is equal to EEI, in other words, he does not consider any feedbacks including the Planck feedback and calculates the energy supposed to accumulate in Earth’s climate system as if the assumed absorption of this anthropogenic combustion heat would have caused zero warming (and thus no increase in the outgoing infrared radiation emitted from Earth to space).

3) Possible roots of Nabil’s delusion
Although I originally thought that a such collection of mutually conflicting, absurd, physical nonsense cannot result from anything else than from deliberate trolling, now I admit that it may be also product of self-delusion caused by denial of greenhouse effect as allegedly “violating second law of thermodynamics”.

This frequent, seemingly convincing mantra of pseudo-scientific denialists is based on misinterpretation of the rule that between two bodies in mutual contact, heat spontaneously flows from the warmer one to the colder one. Greenhouse effect denialists “extrapolated” this rule the way that thermal radiation from colder upper atmosphere allegedly cannot “warm” warmer Earth’s surface. This assertion is, however, incorrect because the rule in fact applies only to “net radiation” (which is a difference between the radiation emitted from the warmer body to the colder one, and the radiation emitted from the colder body in the opposite direction).

I admit that it remains unclear how Nabil dismissed the other relevant anthropogenic radiative forcings like aerosols or human influence on Earth’s albedo, as he has not provided any hint in this direction yet.

4) Further remarks
– With respect to your assertion “all the heat would quickly be lost to space, UNLESS something keeps it in the atmosphere”, I am afraid that it is very ambiguous. If you mean the rate of global mean surface temperature (GMST) decrease towards new steady-state GMST in a hypothetical case that all non-condensing greenhouse gases suddenly disappear from Earth’s atmosphere, I assume that it could take several centuries or millennia due to heat release from the ocean. I am not sure if this is what you consider as “quick”. If you could, in parallel, remove also all water, I assume that establishing the new steady-state GMST would be several orders of magnitude quicker.

– With respect to your sentence “The greenhouse effect means some incoming energy is retained in the system.”, I would rather say “Higher greenhouse effect increases steady-state energy of the system in comparison with smaller greenhouse effect”, because even in total absence of all greenhouse gases including water, Earth would still establish a steady state with certain energy content.

– The analogy between the effect of greenhouse atmosphere and the effect of fiberglass insulation is very good, I think.

Greetings
Tomáš

Tomas Kalisz:

1) By the “knowledge of future”, I meant that we do not know how the mankind will further interfere with terrestrial hydrological regimes – quite similarly, as we do not know future emissions of greenhouse gases.

Thank you, Nabil, I mean Tomas, for explaining the obvious, while not addressing the points I have actually made, Iquote:

==== Piotr, 16 sep :
“1. Climate models produce projections, not predictions. “Projections” DON’T need nor use, “the knowledge of the future” – they tell us what would be the outcome for a given set of inputs.
And why would you presume that your “criticism” apply to the IPCC models BUT NOT TO YOU? Your study is just … a difference between two PROJECTIONS [and neither uses] “the knowledge of the future”.
In other words, how does it help to “tackle the climate change” (the goal of funding by the Europe Horizon you apply for)?”
=== end of quote =========

Which of these two points are still incomprehensible to you?

TK 2) I am aware that combining each emission scenario with two or more hydrological scenarios might be technically intractable.

irrelevant to the point you engage:
Piotr 16 Sep. 2. ” [since the hydrology is already included in climate models] your “explicit quantification” offers ZERO improvement to the climate models,.

see also Piotr 8 Sep. : “What new insight would we get – if from the results of a GCM that already calculates/parametrizes surface moisture – we found that out the total, say, 3C of warming in a given grid element, 0.1C is due to [unnatural surface moisture limitation via a passive feedback of evaporation with T]” ?

T: 3) I say “Let us look if climate sensitivity depends on water availability for evaporation from the land.” And you say “There is no such research yet – if you suggest it, please prove first that climate sensitivity indeed depends on water availability for evaporation from the land”

That’s a Nabil-Class Strawman,
a) I didn’t say “There is no such research yet” – I said the OPPOSITE – that the research indicating that the effect you speculate about is negligible ALREADY EXISTS (Lague et al. 2023)
b) my p.3 was NOT about you “proving first that climate sensitivity indeed depends on water availability”, but questioned the value of your ““ explicit quantification”, I quote:

Piotr 16 Sep.: “3. it is a passive feedback, which we can’t do anything about, and which is already modelled by models – thus your “ explicit quantification ” provides the Horizon Europe funding agency with ZERO information relevant to its goal of “tackling the climate change””

In what logical system these words can be presented as: “ please prove first that climate sensitivity indeed depends on water availability for evaporation from the land” ???

TK : 4) The direct effect of changes in water availability from the land on global mean surface temperature described by Lague et al is a different phenomenon than the speculated

Again – in what logical system the above is the answer to my point 4:
Piotr Sep 16: 4. Since there is no practical insight – what NEW USEFUL theoretical insight would you get if after succeeding in your diversion of the money, computational resources, and research effort, AWAY from the proposals helpful in “tackling the climate change”, you “ explicitly quantified” that …. today’s T increase over land would be say, 1 C smaller, than the one on …. a hypothetical Earth from alternative universe where there is no water availability issue (let’s call it “Swampland Earth”) – because that’s the only way to “explicitly quantify” the model sensitivity. How does it help Horizon Europe. to meet their main objective of “tackling the climate change”????

TK In yet other words, I do not know if the speculated effect does exist.

It was not the question, the question was SO WHAT – if we already know – from the massive volumes of water involved in natural hydrological budgets, and from the MAXIMUM theoretical range of hydrological effects on GMST (the difference between all continents being deserts and all being swamps) from Lague et al. – that there is NOTHING we can do to the evaporation to mitigate AGW in any significant amount – hence ZERO benefit to the stated goal of Horizon Europe of “tackling the climate change”.

Nor would your “explicit quantification” of the effect that we cannot change and that is already modelled in climate projections, offer any new useful scientific insight – as explained to you many times before – the last time in
Piotr 16 Sep. “What NEW USEFUL theoretical insight would you get if after succeeding in your diversion of the money, computational resources, and research effort, AWAY from the proposals helpful in “tackling the climate change”, you “ explicitly quantified” that …. today’s T increase over land would be say, 1 C smaller, than the one on …. a hypothetical Earth from alternative universe where there is no water availability issue (let’s call it “Swampland Earth”) – because that’s the only way to “explicitly quantify” the model sensitivity”

And how is your ego trip (“I am examining something nobody else thought about before!”), this meaningless exercise of “quantifying” the effect …. of a passive feedback over which we have no influence and which is already represented in climate models
– helping the Horizon Europe’s goal of “tackling the climate change” ?
And how does it justify diverting funding and resources from OTHER projects that COULD have helped with this goal?

BPL: “I can’t agree with your analysis of the rise of conservatism, especially the genetic determinism.”

The following study finds a genetic influence in political leanings:

“Genetic Influences on Political Ideologies: Twin Analyses of 19 Measures of Political Ideologies from Five Democracies and Genome-Wide Findings from Three Populations, Peter K Hatemi, Sarah E Medland et alia, Pub Med Central.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4038932/

“Abstract: Almost forty years ago, evidence from large studies of adult twins and their relatives suggested that between 30-60% of the variance in social and political attitudes could be explained by genetic influences……”

The related commentary I read ( I cant find it now it was ten years ago) essentially suggested this research is one reason why its difficult for conservatives to embrace social change and liberal causes. However the commentary did say research shows its possible for people to change their political ideologies, with some effort, so we are not totally ruled by the genetic predisposition.

Im not defending conservatism. I dont like conservative politics. I lean socially liberal and mildly centre left on economic views. The point being made is the genetic component might explain part of the unfortunate tribalism.

BPL: “I see it as orchestrated by the wealthiest class, who became tired of losing elections and decided to take out democracy as the shortest route to acquiring power, etc,etc….”

I agree strongly with all those comments. But they are not incompatible with a genetic predisposition towards conservatism. Instead your description is conservatism becoming desperate and going crazy.

I think the tiny extremist right are taking a natural genetically driven mild scepticism about immigration amongst their broader base, and stirring it up into an irrational hatred and pure racism. Instead, they could have elected to do the opposite and persuaded their base to be more accepting of immigration given their base are capable of adopting more liberal attitudes, with a bit of effort.

Its an example of the danger of the lunatic extremists you can get on either side of politics. And unfortunately the conservative lunatic extremists have overtaken your government and they are criminal thieves and dont exactly seem very competent either (war on iran). In New Zealand we have our own lunatic extremists as well although not quite as openly lunatic yet anyway.

Ive kept my response short and I have only posted the first few lines of the abstract as I don’t want to overtake the website with walls of text like a certain other person. Anyway I hope its of some use.

(and *not* too wildly different at τ values beyond) → [2 places]