Don’t think I knew that second part about it impacting frequency and not strength, but the rest rings a vague bell. Makes some sense though.
Thanks for the summary.
Another interesting hurricane confounder is El Niño / La Niña more properly termed ENSO.
The El Niño = positive ENSO phase is characterized by anomalously hot water in the equatorial eastern Pacific. Which has a fairly strong suppressive effect on hurricanes in the Atlantic / Caribbean basin.
AGW seems to be creating stronger and more frequent positive ENSO phases. With the result that is suppressing hurricane development. At least as to quantity, if not as to severity.
If the eastern Pacific keeps getting hotter, so even the cool phase in 2040 is about the same as the warm phase in 2000, what then for Atlantic hurricanes? Darn good question.
I wondered whether there’d be anything to do with the sargassum other than bury it, and it turns out that, yes, it could be very useful for fertilizer – but! with caveats. While it’s chock-full of nutrients good for growing crops it’s also prone to having high levels of salt and heavy metals. Still, with proper processing, it has promise. Here’s a detailed article about it:
PBS must be reading the thread. Article from this morning covering the increasing spread, threats to tourism, and very briefly the composting angles.
Apparently we’re getting to the point where it’s now a health and safety hazard too:
Officials on the French Caribbean island of Martinique recently opened a shelter to temporarily house those affected by the toxic gases after residents protested.
Lake Mead is at a record low level. If not, then at least tied enough that it will hit it in the next couple of days. This despite some conservation efforts (based on me both reading articles and watching the outflow levels on the website).
Lake Powell is within a foot or so of a record low level as well. No major storms forecasted so I assume that it too will hit a record low. And there is still quite a few months until the El Nino water is supposed to come.
According to something I just read yesterday, Lake Mead is also within 5 feet of reduced power capacity - at that point, some of its turbines will no longer be able to run safely.
Yesterday I woke up to central A/C blowing hot air. Checked fuses… good. Called locally owned “Home Supply” store and was back up and running within 40 minutes (capacitor). I was damn near impressed.
Yuck. Last time that happened to me I was working in my home office with the thermometer reading 85F while I waited for the repairman. Since then I’ve had the units inspected every spring to ward off a repeat. Replaced the capacitor on one unit a few months ago - likely avoiding this very situation.
You folks should never allow me to visit you, at least not this summer.
A few months ago, our main A/C failed and we spent ~3 weeks awaiting parts and repair.
Then on a trip 3 weeks ago, one of the RV’s air conditioners failed. Not just blowing warmer air, but an expensive buzzing/arcing sound followed by silence. It has 2 air conditioners far a reason, and after driving all day through sizzling Texas heat, the remaining A/C couldn’t get the interior below 90 for 7 or 8 hours at each stop.
Then 2 days ago, after electricians were working on a bunch of stuff in our house, I discovered (after they left) the other A/C had gone silent as well. Thankfully I traced this to one of the circuit breakers they’d opened during their work, and we were blessed with cool air after I reset it.
I have a long drive to the airport today, and I’m almost afraid to drive my car. I’ll probably infect that air conditioner somehow and end up traveling across DFW with open windows. Sheesh.
Preliminary for now, but looks like it’s time to break out the champagne and celebrate another all-time record high! Woo! 
Courtesy of Eliot Jacobson (the climate casino guy) who keeps a series of charts on this stuff updated on blue sky:
Of course, if we were going to celebrate every record broken this year, I’d be much poorer and bordering on liver failure I imagine.
Here’s a scary animation from NASA of the 2026 summer heat in Europe.
I hope everyone left some champagne in the bottle (though probably a little flat by now)
I think the thing that truly shakes me isn’t the magnitude and scale (and duration) of this event. It’s that it’s merely one amongst many such record breaking occurrences this year all over the world.
While I certainly agree that we’re facing a climate crisis that will affect all of us, so much of this stuff is regional. For weeks now here in southern Ontario I’ve had the benefit of fresh air from an open window all night because we’re already in the “transition zone” into fall, even now in late August.
I have no doubt that the A/C will be coming on many times until October, but temps are definitely dropping and nothing higher than 26°C (79°F) is forecast for the next week, and many days much lower. As an Olde Fart subject fo overheating I welcome the colder weather!
Yep.There’s going to be a moment pretty soon when it becomes glaringly obvious even to folks who want to deny AGW that something is now much different than when they were kids. Of course, this is the lead car of the roller coaster clearing the top of the first, tallest, rise. We’re already committed to the rest of the ride, come what may. Hold on!
I was in southern Europe the last 3 weeks. The heat wasn’t bad by US southwest standards; mere mid-upper 90s. But by their standards this is killing hot.
In nations with very little installed air conditioning. And no excess electricity supply to run an extra 600 million HVAC units even if they got magically retrofitted into every home, school, factory, office, or retail.
Once an old stone building gets its rocks heated up, they stay hot inside all night. Ouch!
None of this is regional. The particular effects and their severity are regional, but we’re all in the same crisis.
The direct impacts certainly. But one does wonder how long global infrastructure can bear the strain of so many ongoing and overlapping crises. It’s not like we can expect things to be meaningfully better going forward.
I do agree that it’s nice to enjoy the cool when and where you can. I was in Alaska for the past couple weeks, and if you ignore the glaciers being a shadow of their former glory it was still delightfully refreshing to feel the wind blowing off them.
Of course. I’ve been a long-time advocate for the need for emissions reductions and the existential nature of climate change. You many have missed my many posts on the subject. I’m just saying that even the best global ocean-atmosphere climate models don’t yet have either the spatial or temporal resolution to reliably identify regional impacts.
They seem to be on the cusp of it though with advances in kilometer scale resolution models. Exciting time to be alive. So much power to see into the future we’ve built for ourselves, so little power to actually do anything about it.
Last night I heard thunder and then the sound of some rain while sitting at the computer. Then a pretty furious wind from the back bedroom window which was open, and by the time I got to it rain was pouring in and soaking the carpet. I closed the window and thought no more about it.
Apparently this was the edge of a major storm that caused massive flooding and power outages in a wide area around me.
Climate change related? Who knows. I always question the attribution to any specific weather event. I’ll just say that I’ve never before experienced a storm this severe. After I closed the window, rain was smashing against it like it was from a fire hose. It’s a casement window and I guess I’m lucky it didn’t blow right off its hinges before I cranked it in!
The ice year for Greenland has ended with more than 150 Gt more than average accumulating on its surface. This is balanced by increased ice calving at the front due to the warm water and I assume lack of sea ice, but I assume that Greenland will still gain ice this year.
Unfortunately that’s only around 1/2 mm of global sea level rise, so it won’t offset thermal expansion. In fact, I wonder if this year might be above average for sea level rise due to the super el nino, since heating up already warm water makes it expand more than heating up cold water.