The Washington Post reports that the El Niño forming in the Pacific Ocean could become one of the strongest ever. If current temperature trends continue, it will be the largest oceanographic anomaly since the "super El Niño” of 1877, and this ‟could have significant consequences for agriculture, health and the economy across the planet.” Weather patterns affected will include hurricane and tropical-storm activity, increased chances of floods and droughts in certain regions and record heat and humidity in 2027. The Independent notes that the forming El Niño is accompanied by ‟a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, which also tends to lead to a longer and drier dry season across Indonesia and Australia, raising fire and drought risks and leading to broader global extreme weather impacts.” Also making this El Niño more intense are the strong westerly winds in February and a set of ‟triplet cyclones”, which helped create a ‟freight train of record-warm water” that is heading into the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The Washington Post describes the 1877 El Niño event as the ‟worst environmental disaster in human history,” which ‟fueled conditions that led to a global famine which killed more than 50 million people across India, China, Brazil and elsewhere. That was 3 to 4 percent of the estimated global population at the time, equal to at least 250 million people if it happened today.” It won’t happen at this same scale, because our technological and socio-political systems are better prepared, but we could still see major impacts to food security in the most vulnerable areas. The New York Times examines the history of El Niño, including the possible link to crop failures that helped fuel the French Revolution.

The New York Times reports that predictions of the impacts of the coming El Niño are complicated by global warming. Because the baseline temperature of the planet is higher, the changes brought by the El Niño will likely be different than past episodes. This is why the 2023-24 El Niño, which wasn’t a strong one, still had major impacts in some regions (like 500,000 people displaced by flooding in Brazil).

Inside Climate News describes the El Niño phenomenon as ‟one of the planet’s biggest natural release valves for ocean heat.” The article includes an explanatory video from the Met Office and examines a study that concludes major El Niño events can actually move our climate into a different state. In recent times, the Super El Niño events were 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16. ‟All of them contributed to regime shifts in regional ocean temperatures, leading to unprecedented marine heat waves that destroyed or damaged coral reefs and caused mass die-offs and starvation among many marine organisms, from starfish to seabirds and marine mammals. Those impacts, as well as changes in drought and extreme heat over land areas, persisted for years and could shift some regional patterns for decades.” Understanding what might happen can help countries close what is known as the ‟adaptation gap,” which is the difference between known climate risks and actual preparation for the changes.

In The New York Times, David Wallace-Wells notes that ‟we are going to learn an awful lot about how much climate disruption we can manage at the moment — and, presumably, how much we cannot.” So the coming El Niño provides a preview of future El Niños, but also provides an indication of how well we are prepared for the future that is now arriving.

Carbon Brief describes the key takeaways from the first global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, which was attended by 57 countries (representing a third of the global economy) in Santa Marta, Colombia, at the end of April. The attendees were all asked to start working on plans to phase out fossil fuels. Several major countries, including the U.S., China and Russia, were not invited as they hadn’t demonstrated the ‟necessary spirit to be part of the ‘coalition of the willing.’” Scientific American notes that one of the first actions was to ‟launch a panel of scientists that will advise those countries on how to shift to clean energy.” Wow, governments that want to understand the science of climate and carbon-free energy… how quaint. During the conference, a group of researchers released a report listing 12 high-level actions that nations can take to support a fossil-fuel phaseout.

Bill McKibben quotes the UN envoy at the Santa Marta talks: “Renewables offer something fossil fuels never did: stability and sovereignty. There are no embargoes, price shocks or tariffs.” The next summit will be held in the island nation of Tuvalu and co-hosted by Ireland. Salon describes how the Iran war is accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels in countries around the world, noting the irony that Donald Trump is unwittingly causing this to happen.

The Washington Post describes the ever-more-dire water supply situation developing on the Colorado River, where the snowpack that feeds the river is the smallest on record and reservoirs are nearing historic lows. As average river flows and the volume of stored water have declined continuously over the last few decades, the seven states affected have been arguing about how to address the problem. A Utah State professor compared the use of water in the diminishing river during the 21st century to “the situation to someone losing their job and then continuing to spend most of the money in their bank account.”

One of the most confounding policies of the Trump Administration is the declaration of “energy emergencies” to force utilities to keep coal power plants open and operating. Inside Climate News notes that the Secretary of Energy has issued 13 emergency orders to keep five coal plants operating in Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Washington and Pennsylvania. He insists that these orders ‟maintain affordable, reliable, and secure electricity.” There is no evidence to support this claim, and The New York Times reports that ‟keeping the plants open has already cost hundreds of millions of dollars, much of which will be paid by ratepayers.” In many cases, communities had worked for years to plan these closures, and utilities agreed to them as part of a long-term plan to save consumers money.

Michigan Advance notes that Secretary Wright just renewed his order to keep the Campbell plant operating in Michigan for another 90 days, which prolongs an already absurd situation. ‟Consumers Energy said in its most recent earnings statement that the additional cost of keeping the J.H. Campbell plant open reached $180 million as of March.” The New York Times describes a similar situation in Washington, where the Centralia plant “reported nearly $20 million in costs during the first three months of the emergency order, even though it has not burned any coal since the directive was issued in December.” And in Indiana, where Wright ordered the Northern Indiana Public Service Company to keep one of its units at the state’s R.M. Schahfer plant operating, an official noted in a regulatory hearing that the facility has been broken since last summer and “requires more than $100 million in investments to operate at full capacity.”

The Trump Administration is being sued about these orders, and has argued in court that only it can determine if an emergency exists (the suit has been brought by the states of Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, along with nine environmental groups). Inside Climate News reports that, in the U.S., the 91-year-old Federal Power Act spells out that ‟utilities, states and regional planning authorities decide whether electricity resources are adequate, with input from the public.” The federal government has no role.

The state of Washington is also fighting back legislatively. The New York Times notes that, in response to the order to operate the Centralia plant, ‟Washington legislators passed a law that ensured the plant was covered by the state’s cap-and-trade law and a sales tax on coal,” which will make running the plant an even-more-expensive proposition. While Trump declares an emergency unless these plants keep operating, several of them haven’t been — yet the lights are still on. Of course, there is no emergency and the plants are not needed, which is why they were scheduled for closure in the first place. At the same time, Trump is fighting utilities that are trying to invest in lower-cost solar and wind to serve their customers. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Meanwhile, Danger Season is in full swing. Reuters reports that ‟torrential rain continued ​across southern and central China on Tuesday with at least 21 people killed in ‌widespread flooding that also closed schools and businesses, and disrupted transport and power supplies.” Scientific American describes the source of the mid-May heat wave that hit the Eastern U.S. This is a sign of climate change. ‟Overall, summer heat waves are becoming more intense, longer-lasting and more frequent. The high-heat season is also bleeding into spring and fall.” The Guardian describes a record-breaking heat wave that brought summer temperatures to Europe this May. Another article notes that this is becoming the new normal: ‟In 2024, summer heat in the EU claimed roughly three times more lives than car crashes, 16 times more than murderers, and more than 10,000 times more than terrorists.”

CNN reports on the growth of solar power in Cuba, which is in response to the U.S. blockade of the island. Cuba used to trade medical expertise to Venezuela for oil, but this ended with the U.S. invasion of Venezuela last year. The impacts of the blockade have been severe. ‟In March, the country experienced three nationwide blackouts, cutting electricity for its roughly 10 million residents. Trash piled up in the streets, hospital surgeries were limited and people burned wood to cook.” Like in so many countries, the expansion of solar power has been surprisingly swift. ‟China exported around $3 million of solar panels to Cuba in 2023; that figure rocketed to $117 million in 2025”, and electricity from renewables rose from 3% in 2024 to 10% in 2025. “The country has pledged that figure will rise to at least 24% by 2030.” Experts note that, even with assistance from China, Cuba will struggle with the cost of converting to solar, particularly as grid infrastructure on the island is old and in need of major upgrades.

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