Harsh Weather

Expect weather whiplash – drought to floods in a predictable see-saw of disasters. Dr. Malte Stuecker’s team finds El Nino and La Nina get stronger – changing the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Over 50,000 Europeans died due to excess heat in 2023 and again in 2024. Dr. Christopher Callahan with latest on heat deaths in Europe. Distinguished Professor Sandra Yuter reveals a week less winter and a week more heat stress in parts of America.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

CLIMATE RESONANCE

MALTE STUECKER

What if extreme weather systems across all oceans start working together? We find that strange new future in a study in Nature Communications. The title is: “Global climate mode resonance due to rapidly intensifying El Niño-Southern Oscillation“. We reached the Lead Author, well-published climate Meteorologist Malte Stuecker. Malte heads or is part of several research institutes at the University of Hawaii. He has published over 110 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.

This new paper also counters posts by Dr. James Hansen and Leon Simons suggesting that reductions in sulfur from ship emissions was a primary driver of the big heat jump globally in 2023 and 2024.  Yes, cloud cover over the shipping lanes was reduced – but that was balanced by increased cloud over the Southern Hemisphere.  Changes in cloud cover were not the driving factor in the big heat change, new science says.

Listen to or download this 18 minute interview with Malte Stuecker in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

This study uses a state-of-the-art coupled climate model developed by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. Technically the model is called “AWI-CM3”. Co-authors Rohit Ghosh and Thomas Jung are from the Alfred Wegener Institute, host to the model used in this study. If the model is correct, by 2050 Earth would enter a dangerous new phase of weather extremes that are no longer irregular, but predictable.

This new theory of developing interactivity of major drivers of extreme weather did not come out of nowhere. For years, Malte Stuecker worked on large-scale patterns of ocean/atmospheric actions. He led and co-authored dozens of papers on the sub-pieces for this new paper, things like tropical Pacific decadal variability, the future of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, and so on.

In our interview, Malte introduces and then discusses three major weather-makers: ENSO, the Indian Ocean Dipole and North Atlantic Oscillation. These tend to operate more or less separately, but climate change could link them up, called “resonance”. That has very serious implications.

YOUR REGULAR DOSE OF EL NINO FORCING

The strongest and most damaging El Nino events were in 1982-83; in 1997-98, and most recently in 2015-16. I would add the weaker El Nino in 2023 pushing a record heat that year and following. If we go ahead to 2050, this big model suggest even these past monsters will seem tame compared to much stronger and more damaging El Nino’s, coming regularly.

Picture the global ocean 30 years from now. It may be hotter all over. Is it possible general ocean warming will overwhelm the El Nino event? For example, a new study finds “Pan-basin warming now overshadows robust Pacific Decadal Oscillation“. [Article Open access Published: 07 November 2025].  What is the relationship between continuing heating and current drivers like El Nino?

A paper 20 years ago by Malte’s colleague Axel Timmermann suggested the ENSO cycle reaches a “crossing of a Hopf bifurcation in the mid-twenty-first century”. In the new paper, this team also found the noise of random weather leans toward a more predictable pattern, possibly around mid-century. We think of this “bifurcation” as a kind of tipping point in large atmospheric systems.

A CHANGE OF EUROPEAN WEATHER DRIVERS

Increasing ENSO influences on the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) are likely to have important implications for atmospheric impacts and climate predictability over Europe. The paper says:

“Under present-day conditions, the influence of ENSO on the NAO is detectable but generally weak and indirect. Consequently, current seasonal forecasts for the European climate do not treat ENSO as a primary driver of NAO-related variability or impacts. According to our simulations, however, this could change in the future.”

WEATHER WHIPLASH

In this paper, “hydroclimate” is the power interactions between the ocean and atmosphere. It leads to extreme weather swings, like “hydroclimate whiplash,” which refers to the rapid transition between very wet and very dry conditions.

In this context, “whiplash impacts” refers to the social, ecological, and economic consequences of very rapid swings between opposing extremes – typically from one hazardous state to another – rather than the extremes themselves. For weather and ENSO, it usually means impacts from going quickly from drought to flooding, or from unusual cold to unusual heat (or vice versa), with little time for systems to recover or adapt in between.

ALEX BEGINS TO THINK

If the model is correct, by 2050 Earth would enter a dangerous new phase of weather extremes that are no longer irregular, but predictable. Giant atmospheric systems, coupled to warming marine conditions, which operated on different timetables, or so far on no observable timetables, all become linked into a kind of global clock.

There could be advantages for more predictability so governments and populations can plan or adapt. But adapting to repeated pummeling by extremes of heat, rainfall, drought or typhoons becomes harder and harder. This is the point behind a new article in The Conversation by James Dyke and Stefan Rahmsdorf: climate disorder leads to social disorder which weakens both adaptation and mitigation of the causes: “The world lost the climate gamble. Now it faces a dangerous new reality”.

We are now at a critical juncture. We are at or very close to human caused environmental change that will fundamentally threaten life-sustaining systems on Earth. These risk triggering feedback loops – for example the accelerating die back of rainforests which would release billions of tons of carbon dioxide which would raise temperatures even further.

Ultimately that could cause the planet to drift along the pathway to “hothouse Earth”, a scenario where even if emissions were reduced, self amplifying feedback loops would drive global temperature increases up to or even beyond 5°C. The last time the climate warmed by such an amount was tens of millions of year ago.

Well before this nightmare scenario, significant impacts are now unavoidable. Increasingly destructive storms will produce more loss and damages, more loss of life. Efforts to accelerate – or even maintain – decarbonization could be undermined by social and political destabilization created by climate change.

If the consequences of climate change begin to interfere with our efforts to deal with its causes, moves towards a more sustainable world risk being delayed or even entirely derailed.

ANOTHER PAPER OF INTEREST (GIVEN STUECKER INTERVIEW)

Article Published: 30 August 2021

Robust decrease in El Niño/Southern Oscillation amplitude under long-term warming

This paper was led by our next guest – Christopher W. Callahan.

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HEAT DEATHS IN EUROPE

CHRISTOPHER CALLAHAN

“mass mortality events remain plausible at near-future temperatures despite current adaptations to heat”

Europe is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet other than the Arctic. In 2003, a deadly heat wave killed tens of thousands of Europeans. A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health found over 60,000 heat-related European deaths in the summer of 2024. What will it be like when the whole Earth is significantly hotter due to climate change?

A new paper in Nature Climate Change investigates increasing risk of mass human heat mortality in Europe. The Lead Author is Dr. Christopher Callahan from Indiana University and the Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford.

Listen to or download this 18 minute interview with Christopher Callahan in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

As climate protection fails and emissions increase, more scientists warn 3 degrees C of global warming is possible this century. We might pass 2 degrees of warming in a decade or two. What happens when a 2003-level heat storm hits Europe again in a 3 degree hotter world?

But people with means adapt. A new paper by Callahan and colleagues found: “recent adaptation to heat in France has reduced the projected death tolls of future 2003-like events by more than 75%.” The trouble is, Callahan tells us, mass heat deaths will continue in Europe, as the world warms beyond adaptation. In fact, the authors conclude: “mass mortality events remain plausible at near-future temperatures despite current adaptations to heat.”.

Even under high adaptation scenarios combined with moderate warming (1.6°C by 2100), heat-related deaths in Europe could increase up to sixfold compared to current levels. See: “From forecasts to fatalities: Mapping the health impacts of extreme heat” 21 July 2025 from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

SEE ALSO: “The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change”   May 31, 2021

As Dr. Mat Santamouris told us: A normal heat day in Athens can be a heat wave in London, where less adapted people start going to the hospital with heat illness at lower temperatures. Here is a transcript from that interview:

“There is a threshold temperature over which mortality is increasing almost exponentially, and this threshold temperature is not the same for every place. For example, for Athens, it is close to 32.5 degrees, because people there are adapted to high temperatures. But in London, it’s close to 23 degrees. So, in every place, there is a threshold temperature over which heat-related mortality is increasing really exponentially or very highly.”

Extreme Floods, City Heat & Politics

GETTING OLD IN THE HEAT

Aging populations also increase the number of people more vulnerable to extreme heat. Many European countries have aging populations, including France, Germany, Italy, and Finland. Kai Chen and many co-authors found remarkable increases in deaths as global warming proceeds. Their paper is: “Impact of population aging on future temperature-related mortality at different global warming levels” – Open access, published: 27 February 2024 in Nature Communications.

Chen et al say:

“Here we show that at 1.5 °C, 2 °C, and 3 °C of global warming, heat-related mortality in 800 locations across 50 countries/areas will increase by 0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.5%, respectively; among which 1 in 5 to 1 in 4 heat-related deaths can be attributed to population aging. “

According to that study, heat deaths DOUBLE when global mean temperature goes from 1.5 degrees C at 2 degrees – possible in the next decade or two. At 3 degrees of warming, deaths are five times higher than current heat waves, possible during this century.

Callahan finds a week of heat deaths may be as severe as the worst periods of COVID-19:

“For example, the most severe 10% of weeks of COVID-19 had between 27,900 and 34,100 confirmed deaths. For an annual GMT of 3 °C, the weekly death toll from 2003-like conditions is comparable to these peak weeks of COVID-19, and for an annual GMT of 4 °C, the weekly death tolls of 1994-, 2003- and 2006-like conditions would exceed even the single worst week of COVID-19 in Europe.”

HOW MUCH IS DUE TO CLIMATE?

In the newest study by Callahan, they find “…at the peak of a 2003-like event at 3 °C, we project climate change to produce an additional 23,000 excess deaths on top of 9,000 that would have occurred without warming, making anthropogenic warming responsible for 72% of the death toll.”

TWO FACTORS TO CONSIDER

If the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation weakens or fails, warm tropical water stops coming to the UK and northern Europe. Would that greatly change projections, and could cold rather than heat return as a major cause of death in Europe?

Secondly, Dr. Camilo Mora from University of Hawaii told us extreme heat causes organ damage that shows up in deaths up to a year later or more later. There is a long tail to extreme heat waves.

Fatal Heat Warning

It sounds like more and more of people’s time, and the global economy, will be devoted just to survival. We try to keep this civilization going during hotter and longer-lasting heat. Heat survival will become a basic preoccupation in coming decades.

ANOTHER PAPER COMING FROM CALLAHAN

There is a pre-print around for a new paper “Quantifying the contributions of climate change and adaptation to mortality from unprecedented extreme heat events”.

SEE ALSO: “Estimating future heat-related and cold-related mortality under climate change, demographic and adaptation scenarios in 854 European cities” Pierre Masselot et al. in Nature Medicine, January 27, 2025 (Open Access).

AND: “Temperature-related mortality burden to worsen in Europe”, 22 August 2024 Joint Research Centre. They say: “Heat-related deaths, now six times more frequent in southern than in northern Europe, will occur 9.3 times more frequently in the south than in the north by 2100.”

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HOURS REVEAL CHANGING CLIMATE

SANDRA YUTER

Are you getting less freezing and more heat stress? How does that affect your energy bill?

A new technique analyzing hourly weather reveals a lot. The team combed through 46 years of American weather records to find critical changes. Dr. Sandra Yuter used her 30 years of experience with meteorological hardware and big data dumps to help find trends in masses of weather records. Sandra has Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences. She is Distinguished Professor of Environment Analytics at North Carolina State University.

In this interview we discuss the paper “The power of hourly weather data: Observed air temperature climate trends for pragmatic decision-making” PLOS November 12, 2025 Open Access.

Listen to or download this 18 minute interview with Sandra Yuter in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

NOT YOUR AVERAGE DAY

So much of prediction rests on average data. In many cases that average does not exist in reality. For example, the human body is so individualized that we cannot find anyone exactly like average body measurements. In a way, this investigation into hourly temperatures is a battle against what author Sam Savage called “the Flaw of Averages”.

Yuter et al give examples where daily statistics fail to pick up important faster changes in weather.

“Daily statistics do not convey the instantaneous and time-integrated impacts of weather such as precipitating storms, cloudiness changes, and air mass movements (e.g., fronts).

A maximum temperature of 30 °C (86 °F) recorded for 6 hours over the course of a day will have substantially different impacts on people, animals, plants, and buildings compared to the same maximum temperature recorded for only 1 hour of a day.”

They give the example where air temperature at La Guardia Airport in New York on July 25, 2023 dropped 8 degrees C in a single hour in the afternoon at the start of a rain event. Changes in clouds and winds in just an hour can greatly modify surface air temperatures.

RAPID CHANGES WITHIN A DAY ARE REFLECTED IN ENERGY DEMAND

When it quickly gets hot, even for a few hours, air-conditioners and heat pumps all over the city turn on. The authors of the this new study looked into how hourly temperature measurements can be found in energy demand. They say:

“A summer afternoon shower at 2:00 PM near the daily peak temperature (Fig 1) will have more of an impact on energy usage in terms of cooling degree hours than the same storm if it had occurred overnight at 9:00 PM, which is several hours after the daylight temperature peak.”

“Trends and variability of hourly temperature data in terms of heating degree hours and cooling degree hours are pertinent inputs for forecasting future regional energy demand”.

THREE KEY HEAT THRESHOLDS:

1. the freezing point

2. heat stress

3. energy use

ALEX THINKS: The last two are highly variable between cultures. Athenians tolerate heat that would be heat stress in London. Some countries have people not able to adjust energy use to temperature. They may have little to no energy at all, and no money to buy any. This includes almost a million people in the United States (homeless, broke seniors, etc.).

The freezing point is generally non-negotiable here on the surface. Technically, water under pressure freezes at slightly lower temperatures but that doesn’t apply to us.

THE NORTHEAST HAS LOST WEEKS OF COLD

The study with Yuter says:

“In the winter season, large, significant negative trends in hours below 0 °C (32 °F) are clustered in the northeastern portion of the CONUS (Fig 5) (82 out of 137 stations). For locations east of the Mississippi River and north of 37 °N, these trends correspond with a decrease of ~1.5 to 2 weeks of hours below freezing since the early 1980s.” [CONUS means Continental United States – not including Hawaii or Alaska]

The northwest U.S. and S. Canada have such high year-to-year variability that no trend in change of below freezing hours shows up.

WHERE THE HEAT BUILDS…

According to this paper:

“The highest magnitude summer warming trends are in southern California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. In these locations, the occurrence of temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F) increased by ~1.5 weeks’ worth of hours since the late 1970s. “

BAD JUDGMENT IN THE HEAT

We know from other studies that one symptom of heat stress is poor judgment, cognitive weakening. During the 2010 Russian heatwave, people who did not know how to swim waded into rivers and lakes. Over 1000 people drowned. Radio Ecoshock covered this as it was happening with a correspondent in Moscow. Listen to my 2010 interview with Greenpeace Russia’s Vladimir Tchouprov – recorded as the fires burned across Russia.

Although it would be hard to study, a person might panic, thinking the heat was going to get worse or continue, they can’t stand it, so they… quit their job, choose suicide, fire that gun in anger… Could there be social outcomes attached to hourly changes in extremes?

Plus: we have to consider infrastructure. A single hour of extreme temperature can blow transformers and bring down power grids, possibly also starting forest fires. Some power plants have to shut down during those extra hot hours, further straining the grid or even endangering people depending on air conditioning or medical equipment to survive.

Another result in this study from Yuter and colleagues: across the country experiences of climate change are not the same. It feels different for someone in Indiana than in Massachusetts or Arizona. People in the central U.S. don’t feel much difference from generally variable weather there. We base so much on personal experience – I wonder if this hampers climate communication? Does that make it harder for someone in the Mid-West to believe climate change is happening?

Read a popular science press article on this new study on hourly weather data here at phys.org.

A version of this paper was presented at the Montreal Climate Symposium (with good graphics – .pdf download here).

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BELOW THE RADAR:

CRAZY RAINS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

With all the noise of politics and money, it is easy to miss climate disasters invading millions of lives. Recently, Australia and South Africa hit summer heat – in their spring. Then Canberra Australia went into whiplash with the first below-freezing temperatures ever recorded there in their summer (in December). But the huge under-reported story is simply unbelievable rain flooding Indonesia and South East Asia. Hundreds, possibly thousands have died in several countries. Vietnam was hit by over 1.5 meters of rain – more than 5 feet of rain in three days. The ground was already soaked by an earlier storm, so water piled up along roads, in homes and business, across farm fields.

Thailand just went through epic flooding, the worst in over 100 years. As we learned from previous extreme floods there, drainage is poor. That means unhealthy brown waters just sit over the land for days and even weeks. The New York Times reports more than 1,350 people killed in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam in recent weeks. Hundreds more are missing and millions have been displaced.

Record-setting typhoons and atmospheric rivers are directly due to ocean heating in a greenhouse world and vapor-loaded warmer air.  Very large systems are changing. A study published last February found extreme precipitation in Southern China shot up ten times previous amounts over the last decade. That is astounding, and very hard on people in China.

Dr. Jeff Masters posted on BlueSky November 30:

“Deadliest tropical cyclone of 2025: A rare low-latitude tropical storm (Senyar, which formed at 3.7N) contributed to flooding in Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia that has killed 775+ and left 430+ missing. Lhokseumawe, Indonesia had 15.12″ (384 mm) of rain in 24h ending 12Z Nov. 26.”

EXTREME RAINFALL DOUBLES OVER CHINA

Climate digger Jan Umsonst posted:

“Found now a study on recent China rainfall trends – massive acceleration – looks a bit non-linear…

The study sees the increase since 2010s largely being caused by aerosol reductions. They had an acceleration of the trend from 2.88mm per decade in 2000-2010 to 22.88 mm per decade during 2010-2023. A near 10 fold acceleration is stunning…

My worry is here that the contribution of aerosols is now exchanged by dynamic and thermodynamic drivers that start now increasingly to push precipitation extremes across large parts of China.

For example the Indo-western Pacific Ocean capacitor (IWPOC) seems to intensify. Its a circulation cell ranging from the western tropical Pacific to the North Pacific all the way down to the Southern Indian Ocean. Its a circulation system that funnels from two Ocean basins moisture into China coming from wide distances of warmer oceans.

It seems that the moisture transport into China will massively increase in a warmer world. Likely, driven by insane peak years. Just 2020, 2023, 2024, and now 2025 flooding without end.

For example the early flooding of South China two times in a row in April and Mai 2024 had been caused by the synergistic effects between the IWPOC and the Madden Julian oscillation whose low pressure systems moving from the Indian Ocean to the West Pacific reinforced the rotation of the subtropical high over the West North Pacific which enhanced westward moisture transport towards China (2). “

Here [is] what they write:

“Extreme precipitation is becoming more intense and frequent. The increasing trends in extreme precipitation in China in warm season related to changes in aerosols and greenhouse gases (GHGs) are investigated using observations, reanalysis data and model simulations. A significant accelerating increase in extreme precipitation occurred around 2010, with the trend in accumulated extreme rainfall amount (R95pTOT) increasing from 2.88 mm per decade during 2000–2010 to 22.88 mm per decade during 2010–2023.

The sudden acceleration of the increasing extreme precipitation is largely attributed to the reverse in aerosol trends associated with China’s clean air actions, which affects extreme precipitation through perturbing cloud microphysics and atmospheric dynamics, accounting for half of the change in R95pTOT trends (1). “

(1) “Aerosol Decline Accelerates the Increasing Extreme Precipitation in China” AGU Feb 24, 2025, Aili Zou et al. Open Access

(2) “Extreme Rainfall over South China in April 2024 Associated with Early Indo-Pacific Ocean Capacitor and MJO Events”

THERE IS NO OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD

I ask you to become global citizens.

Look beyond the news filter to see big changes going on in the real world. The oceans and atmosphere are all connected to your own weather, economy, and society. There is no “other side of the world” – just one small planet. Your planet.

I’m Alex Smith. Thank you for listening, and caring. Let’s meet up again next week.

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