CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

James Hansen Super-Duper El Niño 2027 Outlook

Image by Levi Guzman.

Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate, New York Times, June 24, 1988: On June 23, 1988, NASA scientist Dr. James E. Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate, stating he was “99 percent certain that human-induced global warming had begun.”

Over the intervening 38 years, Dr. James Hansen has proven to be climate science’s most reliable academic voice expecting a climate-disruptive future. Now, it’s officially here and it’s a rising star on nightly news broadcasts across the world, if it’s not wildly burning, it’s flash-flooding. The leadership of the world has failed the science. Yet, today’s dangerous disruptive climate system did not have to happen.

James Hansen’s most recent research article explains his expectation of deeper climate system disruptions immediately ahead, entitled: “Super-Duper El Niño and the Bigger Problem,” d/d August 21, 2026, “The El Niño has blossomed. It is off the charts. The usual measures of El Niño have blown past prior record levels in the period with good data, even though maximum effects are still several months in the future.”

The Abstract of this article ominously states: “The ongoing El Niño is already the strongest in the modern record. However, increasing global anomalies, poleward shifting of climate zones, increased rainfall extremes, more rapid flash droughts and fires, and marine heat waves are a result of accelerating human-made global warming. The abnormal El Niño strength is itself likely human-driven.”

Hansen identifies the early indicators of the upcoming Super-Duper El Niño: (1) the heat anomaly in the upper 300 meters of Equatorial Pacific Ocean already exceeds prior super El Niño events “that drove extreme global warming” and (2) sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial Pacific also “far exceeds” prior events. These are the leading indicators of what to expect from the current El Niño over coming months deep into 2027. Every data point is at an extreme reading, well beyond the historical norm. It........

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