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  I enjoyed listening to Bill McKibben on Ezra Klein's show this week. Its refreshing to hear a strong case for a future of clean energy abundance and highlight a lot of positive energy trends. That being said, there are a few points where I'd add some nuance to Bill's arguments.

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  This year's record setting El Niño will impact many different parts of the world, with some experiencing severe drought and others flooding. In a new analysis at The Climate Brink, I explore what impacts happened during past events and which are most likely to occur this year https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-impacts-of-this-years-record

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  The world has made real progress in steering away from some of the darkest climate futures where global emissions doubled (or more) this century. But as David Wallace-Wells and I note in today's NYT, we are not out of the woods yet, and climate uncertainty is not our friend: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/opinion/climate-temperature-extreme.html

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  The August Niño3.4 numbers (ONI) came in at ~2.6C, a tad lower than most models predicted as temperatures largely stalled. This will likely change next week with some strong westerly wind bursts, but the trajectory may lead to a slight downward revision in September model runs.

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  The rise in Niño 3.4 region sea surface temperatures over the past few weeks has been nothing short of astonishing. We are now hotter than any days during the 1997/1998 super El Niño event, and we are still many months from the peak.

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  Published estimates of AI energy use per prompt (~0.3 watt-hours) appear reassuring small. But they are increasingly disconnected from how we actually use AI. Modern agentic tools use around 600 times more energy per prompt, as I discuss in my latest over at The Climate Brink https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-real-energy-use-of-agentic-ai

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  I've previously done 2026 and 2027 global temperature estimates for the Earth's surface, but a lot of people also seem interested in what will happen in the lower troposphere (TLT). Historically TLT has had a much bigger response to El Niño and La Niña than we see on the surface:

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  I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.

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  2026 El Niño models continue their inexorable march upwards. CanSIPS (which used to be among the cooler ones!) released their August runs today, and now show a Nov/Dec peak of 3.6C (CanESM5) and 4.2C (GEM-NEMO). For reference, the prior record El Niño peaked at 2.8C.

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  Jim Hansen and I have had a friendly debate about whether 2026 will be the warmest year on record or not. In a new piece, I explain how we both might end up being right: 2026 is increasingly likely to be the warmest in GISTEMP but second across all six records: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/why-hansen-may-end-up-being-right

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  Fires in France have now burned over 91,000 acres, by far the most of any year since the satellite record started in 2006. Current area burned is about 34x larger than this date in a typical (median) year:

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  2026 is on track to be the warmest (~35% chance) or second warmest (~63%) year on record, while 2027 is very likely (92% chance) to be the warmest on record on the back of a growing super El Niño event. For more, check out my new Carbon Brief State of the Climate Q2 update: https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-rapidly-developing-el-nino-raises-chance-of-record-warm-2026

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  The claim that "pink elephants cannot fly" is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that pink elephants can fly. 🙄

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  The Niño 3.4 region of the tropical Pacific has been hovering above 2C for the past week. This is the threshold for a very strong ("super") El Niño event, and it was reached more than a month before the prior record set during 1997/1998:

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  With all the July model runs now in, it is very likely that 2026 will see the largest El Niño event since records began in the late 1800s – and potentially by a truly mind-blowing margin. The median estimate is now 3.6C, roughly 0.8C hotter than the prior record (2.75C). https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-strongest-el-nino-ever

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  Folks skeptical of human-driven warming like to point to a period of somewhat less rapid warming from 1900-1945. In a new analysis at TCB, I dig into the different factors driving it, and find that humans, natural factors, and variability all played an important role: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/what-drove-the-early-20th-century

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  Claude Fable 5 (nee Mythos) is out today. One of the ways I like to test new models is by giving them daily global temperature data (ERA5) and asking them to come up with some creative and compelling visualizations. Here is how Fable did!

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  July ECMWF runs are in and forecast an even more extreme El Niño event than the prior June runs. ENSO3.4 region temperatures reach 3.9C in December, and forecasts are around 0.3C warmer than they were in June.

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  On this hot fourth of July it is worth reminding folks that its not the sun that's causing global warming. Solar output (as measured by satellites) has been flat over the past 50 years when global temperatures have shot up. Its our emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

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  Heat waves are driven by weather patterns but occur on the backdrop of a rapidly warming world. Without climate change the current European heat wave would have been ~3.2 °C (5.8 °F) cooler. Heat impacts are non-linear, so this higher severity can lead to much greater suffering

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  This warming has been fastest in the winter months – driven in part by greater absorption of sunlight with less winter snow cover – but has been rapid year-round:

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  If we can get global CO2 emissions to zero, we generally expect the world to stop warming. But why this occurs is fascinating: cooling from falling atmospheric CO2 is more or less perfectly counterbalanced by warming from ocean temperature equilibration.

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  The latest CFSv2 model results for El Nino (ONI) anomalies later this year are kinda nuts, with a peak at nearly 3.9C in November. NOAA needs to once again raise the y-axis range; here is what it should look like without all the runs above 4C cut off:

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  Another big El Nino update: CanSIPS (the Canadian modeling group) updated their April 30th run to a new May 31st one, with a big impact (+0.9C) on the cooler CanESM5 model. That model, along with Germany's DWD, had been the only ones perviously forecasting a relatively weak event.

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  May 2026 was the second warmest May on record in the ERA5 dataset, at 1.42C above preindustrial (1850-1900) levels.

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  Two things can be true: • RCP8.5 was never a realistic "business as usual" scenario • The world has made real progress bending the emissions curve down Glen Peters, Piers Forster, and I explain in a new article: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/on-the-death-of-rcp85 1/11

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  Predicting the future of energy is hard, and reality has a way of moving in directions we don't anticipate. Andrew Dessler has a new piece over at The Climate Brink on how energy systems have evolved in the US compared to expectations: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/nobody-knows-the-future-of-energy

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  While the shale gas revolution has transformed the US electricity system, so has the rise of wind and solar which have added nearly as much generation as gas since 2005. Both have met new demand while decimating US coal generation.

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  Today the World Meteorological Organization released projections of where temperatures may end up over the next five years (baed on 13 different models and 250 ensemble members): https://wmo.int/resources/publication-series/wmo-global-annual-decadal-climate-update/global-annual-decadal-climate-update-2026-2035 Their estimates for 2026 and 2027 are quite close to my (updated) ones:

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  And using the new relative Oceanic Nino Index (rONI) that looks at the difference between the Nino3.4 region and the broader tropical sea surface temperatures: