iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Tim Osborn @timosbornclim.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’ve updated the long-running (starts 1866) CRU Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). This lets us compare the currently developing El Niño with earlier events including 1877-78. 2026 has developed very quickly, similar to the 1997-98 one. Thick line is 3-month running mean, with y-axis reversed.

1866-present timeseries of Climatic Research Unit SOI with some major El Niño events marked.

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Justin S. Mankin @jsmankin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

"Pricing El Niño is not the same as preventing its loss of life. Yet, many of those acting on its forecasts are using them to move money, not people, out of harm’s way." My editorial for Science on why hedging El Niño is not the same as adapting to it: www.science.org/eprint/DU6FR...

science.org

Hedging El Niño isn’t the same as adapting to it

Record-setting warm waters slosh eastward across the tropical Pacific, forming El Niño. This recurrent climate pattern reconfigures severe weather worldwide, and with it, the global economy. Scientist...

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Kim Wood @drkimwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

In the eastern North Pacific south of Mexico, Hurricane Polo has rapidly intensified from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in just over a day and continues to barrel toward category 5 strength.

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Emily Atkin @emorwee.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

A few weekends ago I went to Miami and attended 9 open houses in extremely high-risk flood areas to see what agents are telling prospective buyers about them. Here is my journey

heated.world

The open houses at the edge of disaster

What are buyers being told about climate risk in Miami? I posed as one to find out.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 16/09/2026

actually i am not thrilled. keep your wordy, icon-filled slides with that one weirdly-smooth font AI that always uses away from my eyeballs.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 16/09/2026

I am just *thrilled* scientists are using AI to make slides for their research talks. It's now so easy to make overstuffed, incomprehensible slides that are totally ineffective as visual aids. Anybody who tries to communicate clearly with simple visuals is going to look even better by comparison.

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Ambarish Karmalkar @ambarish.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

How has Nepal's Langtang region, which recently experienced a devastating flood and debris flow event, changed over time? Warming changes things -- scientists and colleagues from Nepal explain. smallearth.org.np/activities/w...

Plot showing a steady increase in seasonal temperatures in the Langtang region of Nepal since the 1940s.

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

We started a trade war with these people because the president, who has some sort of degenerative brain disease with visible bruises on his hand's injection site that the press doesn't talk about, was bored.

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Emily Cassidy @enviroem.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

As of April 2026, nearly 80% of the U.S. beef cattle herd was in areas suffering from drought (according to Rabobank). A much higher share than the past 40 years. Seems bad. media.rabobank.com/asset/0f14b2...

Chart showing the share of the beef herd in moderate or worse drought, from 1986 to present. In April 2026, almost 80% of the beef cow herd was in drought, a much higher share than in years past.

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Dr Dan Shugar 🇨🇦 @watershedlab.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

By now we know that it was not JUST glacier ice, but a tremendous bedrock landslide that collapsed in Nepal. @planet.com satellite imagery shows a fairly large (0.17km2) lake has formed, which could release a sizeable flood if it were hit by further rockfalls. This is concerning for rescue workers.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 28/08/2026

Sam is exactly bang on about this. So many geological or botanical estimates of hazards cannot be related to metrics that are meaningful to decision makers. Unless paleodatasets can meet that threshold, it's really freaking hard to influence a decision.

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RoseJerry’s Baby @jeratthemovies.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Waking up to a real-life Star War.

The opening crawl from STAR WARS: EPISODE 1 - THE PHANTOM MENACE.

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WIRED @wired.com · 21/08/2026

“People have talked about the Colorado River crisis for decades—we’re now in it,” says one expert. “Everyone you talk to is like, ‘Shit, man.’” www.wired.com/story/the-su...

wired.com

The Super El Niño Won’t Fix the West’s Water Crisis

“People have talked about the Colorado River crisis for decades—we’re now in it,” says one expert. “Everyone you talk to is like, ‘Shit, man.’”

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Brian McNoldy @bmcnoldy.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 made landfall in #Miami on the morning of September 18, 1926. I am publishing this post one month ahead of the anniversary to share some new wind speed maps I created, which I hope can be useful to the community as the centennial approaches.

bmcnoldy.blogspot.com

100th anniversary of the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane

Updates and summaries on tropical Atlantic activity... including easterly waves, tropical storms, subtropical storms, and hurricanes.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 18/08/2026

These are excellent resources, and important for preserving our memory of an event that somehow still seems easy to forget/overlook. Thank you, Brian.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 17/08/2026

Very elegant visualization, that’s so helpful. Thank you for sharing Mitchell (and also Andrew).

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 17/08/2026

I support your goldblumming on this subject. I keep my eyes shut for more than half of most talks.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 16/08/2026

I know we don't really know each other, but is there a chance that Tom is also in Minneapolis tonight? It has been ages since we've seen each other.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 14/08/2026

Neat new survey of what appears to be the worst historical floods in Europe, from the PAGES Floods Working Group:

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Mark Parrington @mparrington.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Increasing Indonesia fire emissions & regional smoke transport since 1 August 2026 at the start of a potentially extreme fire season enhanced by El Niño, visualised by #CopernicusAtmosphere Fire Emissions Watch apps.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/fire-emissio... @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social @ecmwf.int

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Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

This is our climate change reality. BC is at the sharp end of the climate change spear in terms of fire in Canada. Graph below shows annual area burned in BC 1950-2026. Top 6 years have been since 2017 and BC has experienced more area burned during 2017-2026(red) as compared to 1950-2026 (green).

Annual area burned in BC 1950-2026. Recent years are ciffc data

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Lauren Rosenthal @laurenthal.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The fast-growing "Super El Niño" is looking like a potential macroeconomic shock for parts of the Global South. Add in geopolitical conflict and...the timing isn't great. New story out from @bloomberg.com 🧵

A chart showing estimated impact of rainfall anomalies on headline CPI by country, with 1.87 percentage point boost from drought in Indonesia and 1.85pp boost from drought in the Philippines

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 04/08/2026

Thanks for looking that up, Steve. I remember spending most of that summer stuck inside at home, with the weather being consistently dry and dusty and hot.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 04/08/2026

Thanks for the correction, Jeff. I figure the EM-DAT number has to be an error. '89 was the record-holder for area burned until 2023 but even so, there's no way that particular geographic distribution of fires adds up to such a large loss (in US dollars, no less).

Map showing wildfires across Canada in 1989. Obtained from https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/en/fire-history

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 03/08/2026

Dan is correct, speaking as maybe (?) the only resident climate/cat person from the keystone province here on Bluesky, there’s just no way $11B is plausible for any flavor of damages from wildfire in Manitoba.

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Kate Marvel @drkatemarvel.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Fires depend on: ♨️ Weather ⚡ Ignition 🍂 Fuel 🧯 Suppression In North America: ♨️ Climate change = hotter and drier ⚡Ignition = no real change 🍂 Fire deficit = more fuel 🧯Warmer nights = suppression is hard What should we do? 📉 Cut emissions ✅ 🔥 Controlled burns ✅ 🍁 Rake more? ❌ 🇨🇦 Be mean to Canada ❌

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Kelly Hereid @kellyhereid.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Timely... "Canada’s 2023 wildfire smoke caused a 2.8 percent drop in solar power generation, costing two billion dollars" Follows the @costasamaras.com rule where you know exactly what you get from the title Haven't gotten to do this in a minute: Physical risk 🤝 Transition risk

nature.com

Canada’s 2023 wildfire smoke caused a 2.8 percent drop in solar power generation, costing two billion dollars - Communications Earth & Environment

Wildfire smoke caused a 6.38 ± 8.86 terawatt hour solar power loss (2.8 percent) and about 1.88-billion-dollar cost, according to an Earth system model comparing simulations with and without wildfire ...

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Tom Di Liberto @tdiliberto.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

El Nino thread! 🌊 My Key Takeaways: 1. This event is well on its way to being a very strong event rarely seen in the last 75 years. 2. Right now, it's most likely not the strongest on record. 3. The warming of the nino3.4 region due to climate change does not add to El Nino strength!

Line graph showing ocean temperatures in nino3.4 region. Current temperatures are record breaking hot

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 23/07/2026

I’m a little embarrassed to post this for the academic crowd, but in case anybody is interested about how things are sometimes done over here: “A few basic things I’ve learned about catastrophe and climate risk modeling after four years in the insurance industry.” www.wtwco.com/en-us/insigh...

wtwco.com

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Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf @rahmstorf.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Beach holidays in the climate crisis, France. As an old viral quote said: “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 20/07/2026

The map is great. I love the map. Can you remind me the real world time difference between the release of version 14 and 15? And maybe flip the color scheme?

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 20/07/2026

Cristi, I cannot believe you stayed up late last night to work on this. I love it. A comparison of established tools and new versions that show both the direction and magnitude of change? Yes please and thank you!

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Canadian History Ehx @cdnhistoryehx.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

James Doohan wasn’t just Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, he wasa Canadian who served his country and landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Then he turned to acting, was trained by Lorne Greene and even helped develop the Klingon language. This is his story. 📸 NBC 🧵 1/12

James Doohan as Scotty sits at a control console aboard the USS Enterprise, wearing a red Starfleet uniform with a black collar and a delta insignia on his chest. He leans slightly forward with one hand resting on the console, his dark hair neatly combed to the side. Behind him are colorful control panels and futuristic set walls characteristic of the original Star Trek series bridge.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

That would be coooooool, and loads more sophisticated that a lot of the approaches already in use over here. Not all, mind you, but still a lot.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

Analysis would be great, but in the interim, us knowing that verification is kinda 🤷 + a general idea about how it could be done would be more than enough for us. We value the opinion of informed folks (and many tools already for sale are not so straightforward to understand!).

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

James and I were just chatting last week about this problem (and a few others too)!

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

Thanks, that is new to me! If anyone was so inclined to write up a short blog post on that product, its methods to estimate extremes, and the question of how well that works in reality, we’d be happy to help with that and/or give it a industry platform…

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

Yeah, for insurance, correlation nearly always means "in the same year". BUT ALSO these questions need to be routed through the specific perils and places where large claims/losses are possible. It is a v small needle to thread, so I think historical analyses will always lead to the same conclusion.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

Agree completely. One of the core lessons from paleo is that the past has often been much wilder than we'd guess based only on recent history.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

It's one of my favorite topics -- we're already collaborating with three of your fellow faculty in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences program! www.wtwco.com/en-us/news/2...

wtwco.com

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

Lloyds commissioned the Met Society to study the problem about a decade ago, and the industry's thinking on the problem hasn't much changed since: www.lloyds.com/insights/ris... it is a tough problem to prove in obs that rare events have become more synced up.

lloyds.com

The risk of global weather connections - Lloyd's

In weather and climate science, links between extreme weather events occurring in separate regions of the world, taking place over timescales from days to years, are known as teleconnections. The fre...

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

It may be hard to believe, but in the insurance world, many/most people are still low-key debating whether these extreme events are becoming more correlated and usually the default answer is “eh, probably not”.

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Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 19/07/2026

It’s also perhaps worth emphasizing the fact that estimates of very severe, very rare events are not at all constrained by observations, depending on entirely on somebody’s assumptions about the behavior of unprecedented extremes, and have bloody gigantic error terms.

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Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 18/07/2026

I had a reporter ask me if there was any connection between the fires in Canada and the flooding in Texas. I said: of course there is a connection. The connection is increasing temperatures.

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