Day: May 17, 2026

The Electricity Myth: Data Centers Aren’t the Villain

Public backlash toward data centers is escalating. Activist groups gather to voice concerns, and in some cities, council members are being voted out of office for approving data center construction. Extreme resistance includes an Indianapolis councilman receiving 13 bullet holes through his front door and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco home targeted with a Molotov cocktail and gunfire.

From Watts Up With That?

By Kristen Walker

Public backlash toward data centers is escalating. Activist groups gather to voice concerns, and in some cities, council members are being voted out of office for approving data center construction. Extreme resistance includes an Indianapolis councilman receiving 13 bullet holes through his front door and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco home targeted with a Molotov cocktail and gunfire.

More data centers have been rejected or canceled in the first quarter of 2026 alone than in 2025. Communities express concerns regarding noise levels, potential tax breaks, water usage, the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), and electricity demand. Each issue deserves its own conversation. But on the energy front, growing evidence is disproving any correlation between data centers and high electric bills; in some cases, data centers are lowering rates.

It is true that data centers—especially those powered by AI—consume massive amounts of energy and are largely driving the rapid surge in electricity demand. Small and medium-sized centers utilize 1-5 megawatts (MW) of power daily; hyperscale centers operated by Big Tech companies like Microsoft and Google generally consume 20-100 MW, enough to power an entire city.

One might intuitively infer that adding large loads equals higher electricity rates. Politicians and media outlets certainly push the narrative. But the assumption is ill-placed and unfounded.

Virginia hosts 13% of the world’s data centers and 70% of global internet traffic with an astounding 663 centers. Yet, electricity rates remain stable.

Roughly 25% of the Commonwealth’s electricity consumption comes from data center customers, but the 15.94 cents/kilowatt hour (kWh) average residential rate is below the nation’s average of 17.24 cents/kWh. Dominion Energy maintains that recent modest rate increases are “largely attributed to inflationary pressure, not the demand of data centers.”

Even a Virginia state-commissioned report found residential rate payers were not subsidizing costs for larger users, though it warns future demand will require significant new generation and transmission.

Texas, coming in second with 405 data centers, also maintains an average electricity rate below the national average: 16.05 cents/kWh.

A February Charles River Associates study found that U.S. retail electricity rates have generally tracked with inflation and are not primarily driven by data center development, protecting most consumers from cost increases. Increases are mostly due to operating expenses.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) published a study in December finding that data centers are not the primary cause of rising electricity rates. Instead, data centers can lower electricity rates by spreading high fixed grid infrastructure costs across more customers.

Indeed, several states are experiencing lower rates amidst bulging demand.

Data center growth helped California, of all places. The Golden State may be known for the highest electricity rates in the contiguous U.S., but one of its major power companies Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has reduced rates 11% since 2024, attributing the cuts to data center growth. Other factors keep rates high, but increased demand applies downward pressure. PG&E asserts they can lower electric bills by roughly one percent for each gigawatt of new load.

In North Dakota, utilities which saw the largest load growth over the last few years experienced the largest overall-average reduction in prices. LBNL attributes such gains to the spreading of fixed costs and an abundance of low-priced energy.

Ironically, northeastern states have much fewer data centers yet have experienced the largest electricity rate hikes. State policies and lack of generational capacity are the main culprits, not accelerating load growth. Because utilities do not own their generation, they are susceptible to higher wholesale electricity markets. Ambitious net-zero policies like renewable portfolio standards, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative participation, and blocking natural gas pipelines are also major contributors.

The primary mechanism behind the electricity price drops amid data center expansion trend—as seen in multiple states—is utilities’ ability to distribute the high fixed costs of building and maintaining grid infrastructure across a higher total consumption of electricity. As demand rises, those expenses spread across more kilowatt hours, lowering the cost per unit.

Data centers add a lot of steady, predictable load. Consistent round-the-clock electricity consumption at high volumes sells more kilowatt-hours, bringing more stable revenue for the utility. A lower cost per unit of electricity results. Grids operate more efficiently because demand spikes become relatively smaller compared to demand overall, reducing prices for everyone.

Some Big Tech companies are opting to go behind the meter and power their facilities, which prudently avoids ongoing energy controversies and puts them online faster. However, more open and honest discussions are needed among state leaders, lawmakers, and their constituents about data centers, energy policy, and electricity rates.

Every major emerging technology has required more energy and infrastructure. Everything digital runs through data centers, making them foundational, not optional. Questions should center on their undertaking rather than their elimination.

Kristen Walker is Senior Policy Analyst and Manager for Energy and Transportation with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on X @ConsumerPal

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Claim: The Coming El Nino Global Warming may Kill 50 Million People

The 1877–78 event was indeed one of history’s worst climate-related disasters. Comparing it to today serves as a warning about risks to food security, vulnerable populations, and the need for preparedness. However, headlines framing it as “the last time it was this bad, 50 million died” often imply a direct repeat is plausible, which overstates the case without strong evidence.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Essay by Eric Worrall

Beware the horror of temperatures a few degrees warmer than normal.

Last Time an El Niño Was This Bad, It Killed 50 Million People

“It was arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity.”
By Joe Wilkins
Published May 14, 2026 8:57 AM EDT

As if oil shortages, perpetual wars, and the existential angst of AI weren’t stressful enough, there’s an El Niño brewing — and it’s looking like it’ll be one of the most severe in over a century.

…

To find a historical equivalent, scientists have had to reach all the way back to 1877, when a merciless El Niño unleashed death on a scale few events can rival. Per the WSJ, the catastrophe fueled ongoing droughts, culminating in a global famine that killed at least 50 million people, though some estimates peg the loss of life at an even more horrifying 60 million — around 3 percent on the total population on Earth at the time. 

As climate researchers wrote in a 2018 study of the famine: “it was arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity and one of the worst calamities of any sort in at least the last 150 years, with a loss of life comparable to the World Wars and the influenza epidemic of 1918/19.”

…Read more: https://futurism.com/science-energy/el-nino-killed-50-million

Sadly the coming global catastrophe is unlikely to interrupt the ability of climate whiners to pen ridiculous articles.

There may be a food crisis brewing, but it has nothing to do with climate change or El Nino.

While President Trump’s policies have ensured energy self sufficiency in the USA, except in California, climate obsessed places like Australia and Europe, whose reality challenged leaders thought we could live without fossil fuel energy security, experienced such severe price and availability problems, farmers in affected countries were struggling to plant or harvest crops.

Since the Aussie crop sowing crisis earlier this year, Australian fuel prices have stabilised for now, after Prime Minister Albanese suggested to the Sultan of Brunei that a failure to deliver fuel might be met with a failure to deliver food. But we won’t know how much impact the high costs over the last few months have impacted crop sowing decisions and food prices until later this year.

Parts of Africa which are normally self sufficient may be in even worse shape because of their vulnerable fuel supply chains, though hard data on the situation in Africa is difficult to find.

How Once Hardcore Climate Alarmist Lucy Biggers Realized It Was All A Scam, Brainwashing

Lucy Biggers has become a prominent figure in climate-skeptic and anti-alarmist media after publicly describing her former activism as “brainwashing” and, in some interviews, a “scam.”

From NoTrickZone

By P Gosselin

Climate alarmists have been brainwashed to feel existential dread, says ex-climate activist Lucy Biggers in a new interview.

Ms. Biggers, once a leading climate activist until recently, provides the details regarding why she changed her mind and views on current climate alarmism, discussing a progressive timeline between 2020 and 2025 where she deprogrammed herself from climate alarmism.

Schellenberger and Koonin

One of the major turning points came around 2020, when she began secretly reading books that directly challenged the apocalyptic climate narrative. Specifically, she cites Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never and Steve Koonin’s Unsettled, the latter of which opened her eyes to the idea that extreme weather patterns are not matching the catastrophic claims pushed by the media.

Glimpse at dystopia

Secondly, the 2020 lockdowns provided a massive wake-up call regarding what “Net Zero” measures actually look like in practice. She realized that despite the global economy completely shutting down and individuals losing their freedoms, global carbon emissions only dropped by about 5%. This made her question the authoritarian nature and feasibility of the movement’s goals.

Realization it’s a destructive mindset

Thirdly, having her first son in 2022 forced her to establish healthier emotional boundaries and take stock of her values. She realized she did not want to pass down a destructive mindset of existential dread and perpetual guilt for consuming resources in a modern world to her children.

What’s really driving the alarmists?

Lucy notes several overlapping psychological, social, and ideological reasons why activists adopt an alarmist mindset, explaining that within left-wing spaces, the prevailing narrative is that being Western, white, or privileged makes you inherently complicit in historical oppression. For many activists, the climate movement serves as a psychological mechanism to “atone for the sins of their birth” by fighting for oppressed or indigenous groups against “evil fossil fuel companies.”

Attention-seeking

Another factor is social pressure and the algorithmic fgeedback loop: Social media and workplace communication tools (like Slack) create an intense “groupthink” environment. Activists get hooked on a constant dopamine feedback loop of validation, moral superiority, and professional accolades when they post alarmist content.

I just started covering that as a 25-year-old… and all the videos that I made went really viral and so there was a feedback loop of I’m getting a lot of professional success from this and so I just made climate change my kind of whole personality and beat for my 20s…”

Conversely, pushing back causes severe social anxiety and the fear of being ostracized as an “enemy.”

Addiction to self-importance

Lucy highlights that the apocalyptic thinking has deep religious undertones, satisfying a modern craving for meaning and legacy. Activists become “addicted to the nihilism” and the intoxicating self-importance of believing they are saving the world from an end-times scenario.

…you get the nihilism, you get addicted to the nihilism, you get addicted to your your own sense of self-importance, you get addicted to the fact that you are right and other people are wrong and then the engagement you receive on social media—it’s a constant feedback loop.”

Biggers adds:

I remember anytime I used to get a critique when I was still in this groupthink, I would spiral… because my sense of self was built on sand. Like I truly was just constantly pinging the group to be like ‘What are my opinions, am I a good ally, am I a good ally, am I doing everything right to show that I’m like part of this movement?’ And it was so exhausting…”

Gore’s propaganda led to “existential dread”

According to Lucy Biggers, her intense anxiety and worry about the climate at an early age was triggered by watching the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, explaining that she was a sophomore in high school (16 years old) in 2006 when her school played the film during a widespread high school assembly. Lucy describes the overwhelming psychological impact it had on her, which included existential dread and the feeling of having been handed a death sentence

Based on what she took away from the movie, she calculated a timeline for her own survival, stating, “I’m 16, I have till I’m 26… I have 10 years to live… I was racked by anxiety like in my nervous system”.

Watch full video here. 

Norway Leads Europe Back to Energy Sanity

Norway is increasingly positioning itself as Europe’s energy backstop, arguing that expanded oil and gas production is now a matter of continental security rather than simply national profit.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

An article at Liberty Beacon spills the beans, or IOW, explains how they are letting the oil and gas cat out of the bag: ‘We are talking about energy security for Europe’: Norway doubles down on oil and gas production.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Norway, an energy superpower, which gives it its massive sovereign wealth fund,
is stepping up for itself and Europe. Sensible. Everybody wins.
Meanwhile, the Left and the UK look like idiots.

In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister,

“We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.”

This week, to the alarm of environmental campaigners, he announced that three gasfields off the country’s southern coast would reopen by the end of 2028 – nearly three decades after they closed – to meet a shortfall caused by the impact of the war in Ukraine and disruption to supplies from the Middle East.

The decision will help keep gas and oil production at about the 2025 level – which has been stable for almost 20 years – and stay broadly the same for the rest of this decade. Norway has 97 offshore oilfields, three of which came on stream last year, and its Norwegian Offshore Directorate expects “100 and beyond” within the next two years, still producing at least the present level of 2m barrels of oil daily.

The Barents Sea, in the high north, is the new gas and oil frontier – with the prospect of mining for seabed minerals between northern Norway and Greenland, a more distant prospect after initial surveys by the Norwegian Offshore Directorate – an agency of Aasland’s department – showed potential.

“Norwegian offshore production plays an important role in ensuring energy security in Europe,” says Aasland.

“The world, and Europe, will have a need for oil and gas for decades to come and it is crucial that Norway continues to develop its continental shelf to remain a reliable and long-term supplier … and (with) a high level of exploration activity.”

The sector generates vast wealth for Norway, but the decision this week to reopen the Albuskjell, Vest Ekofisk and Tommeliten Gamma gasfields in the North Sea, which were closed in 1998, has received heavy criticism in some quarters.  It goes against the advice of the country’s environment agency, and the Socialist Left party accused the government of “greenwashing”.

North Sea oil rigs | Source: GETTY © GB News

Matt Gibson provides additional details at MSN Norway reopens three North Sea gas fields to power millions of homes while UK stalls.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images

Norway plans to revive three mothballed North Sea gas fields as demand in Europe soars.  As the UK stalls on developing its side of the basin, with new licences banned and work on two fields frozen because of climate challenges, the Norwegian fields will be opened for the first time in 30 years.

They are believed to contain enough fuel to heat millions of homes and the country says it is vital for European energy security.  The gas will be sent by pipeline to Germany with light oil sent to the UK.

The Norwegian government has also said that it is keen to further exploit its resources in the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. It plans to access 70 blocks identified on the seabed.  Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said: “Norway’s oil and gas industry is vital to Norway and to Europe.” Energy minister Terje Aasland said: “Norwegian production of oil and gas is an important contribution to energy security in Europe.

“Developing new gas fields allows Norway to maintain high supply levels over the long term. This has become all the more crucial since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.”

The three fields are run by ConocoPhillips. The company’s European president, Steinar Våge, said: “By utilising existing infrastructure, we can produce substantial resources at low cost, and strengthen gas exports to Europe.”

The UK spent £20b buying oil and gas from Norway last year.
Meanwhile, its domestic output continues to fall. 

Offshore operators have complained that it is becoming difficult to work under the current political regime. Drilling at both Rosebank, Britain’s largest untapped oil field, and Jackdaw, a gas field, has been halted after a legal challenge on climate grounds.  The decision on whether work can restart rests with energy secretary, Ed Miliband.

The Norwegian fields were closed in 1998. However, thanks to new technology, they have become accessible.  They are set to reopen in 2028 and are predicted to be in operation for 20 years. Energy experts suggested that the UK’s offshore industry was being held back by policy.

A spokesman for Offshore Energies UK told the Telegraph:

“The discrepancy in success in the two different regions of the North Sea is not dictated by geology. “It is entirely determined by how respective governments treat oil and gas resources through policy, regulation and taxation.”

Shadow energy minister Claire Coutinho said:

“Norway just announced 70 new blocks of oil and gas exploration, including in the North Sea. “Meanwhile, just over the border on the British side of the North Sea, our Energy Secretary tells us we’ve got nothing left so he has to ban new licences.

“Same basin. Same geology. The difference is political will.”

Apologies to anyone offended by an oilman’s vocabulary.

IPCC Quietly Buries Its Own Climate Catastrophe Scenarios

This refers to RCP8.5 (from AR5) and its successor SSP5-8.5 (in AR6). These high-end emissions scenarios assumed massive, continued growth in coal use and very high forcing (~8.5 W/m² by 2100), leading to ~3–5°C+ warming by 2100 in many models. Critics (including Vahrenholt) have long called them unrealistic “business-as-usual” portrayals that were often treated as likely outcomes in media, policy papers, and impact studies.

Fritz Vahrenholt, a chemist, former environmental senator in Hamburg, renewable energy executive, and longtime IPCC critic (co-author of Die kalte Sonne), argues in his recent newsletter and interviews that the IPCC is effectively abandoning the most extreme “catastrophic” projections used in prior reports.

This refers to RCP8.5 (from AR5) and its successor SSP5-8.5 (in AR6). These high-end emissions scenarios assumed massive, continued growth in coal use and very high forcing (~8.5 W/m² by 2100), leading to ~3–5°C+ warming by 2100 in many models. Critics (including Vahrenholt) have long called them unrealistic “business-as-usual” portrayals that were often treated as likely outcomes in media, policy papers, and impact studies.

Recent developments confirm key parts of this:

Scenario experts preparing inputs for AR7 have stated that SSP5-8.5 (and similar high-end cases like SSP3-7.0) are now considered implausible for the 21st century, based on renewable cost declines, policy trends, and actual emissions trajectories.

Zeke Hausfather (IPCC AR7 lead author) and others have acknowledged the shift: these scenarios were never meant as the most likely “no policy” path but became overused.

This is a meaningful correction. Thousands of studies and headlines relied heavily on these tails for dramatic impacts (e.g., extreme sea-level rise, ecosystem collapse). Retiring them narrows the upper range of assessed futures.

Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) form the core socioeconomic scenario framework used in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and CMIP6 climate modeling. They succeeded (and expanded upon) the earlier Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) from AR5 by integrating detailed socioeconomic narratives with emissions and climate outcomes.

SSPs explore how different plausible futures for global society — in terms of population, economic growth, technological development, inequality, governance, and energy/land-use patterns — could influence greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, mitigation challenges, and adaptation capacity.

On the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht)

Vahrenholt criticizes the court’s 2021 ruling on Germany’s climate law. It struck down parts of the law for insufficient post-2030 targets, citing intergenerational fairness under Article 20a GG (environmental protection), and drew on IPCC material that included extreme scenarios.

He argues this reliance (e.g., on high-warming graphics and projections >3°C) now looks flawed given the scenario revisions, and that the ruling locked in overly aggressive timelines (net-zero by 2045) despite Germany’s tiny share of global emissions (~1–2%). He has co-authored a book fact-checking the decision.

Courts aren’t climate modelers; they rely on expert input. If foundational projections shift, it strengthens arguments for revisiting policy proportionality—especially given Germany’s deindustrialization risks, energy costs, and limited global leverage. However, the ruling’s constitutional logic on future freedoms isn’t automatically voided by updated scenarios.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Farewell to the end of the world

Vahrenholt: Climate catastrophe prophecy was a soap bubble

In his new newsletter, Prof. Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt clears up the disaster scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“The IPCC authors themselves are also saying goodbye to the catastrophic scenarios of the last two world climate reports,” he states, and immediately deals with the new IPCC predictions. He also describes how the Federal Constitutional Court has made a fool of itself in this context. Frankfurt- live has the story.

Prof. Vahrenholt is not just anyone. The Doctor of Chemistry was Hamburg’s Senator for the Environment from 1991 to 1997. He then went to Deutsche Shell AG as board member for renewable energies. In 2001, he became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the wind turbine manufacturer REpower Systems. He then heads the newly founded group company for renewable energies of RWE AG, Innogy GmbH, until 2012. Since 1999, Vahrenholt has been an honorary professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hamburg. He is also a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering Acatech. His bestseller “Seveso is everywhere” (1978) was one of the most influential book publications in the early years of the environmental movement. In 2020, his bestseller “Undesirable Truths” (together with Sebastian Lüning) was published, and in February 2022 his book “The Great Energy Crisis – and How We Can Cope with It”.

So, this is what Prof. Vahrenholt reports in his new newsletter:

“The global temperature in April 2026 remained about the same as in March. It is now 0.39 degrees Celsius higher than the long-term average. The cooling trend of the last two years is coming to an end. The average temperature increase since 1979 has been 0.16 degrees Celsius per decade.

This moderate increase was never compatible with the catastrophic scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicted a temperature increase of 3-5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 in its horror scenarios.

This has been yesterday’s snow since April 7, 2026.

On this day, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have cashed in on the previous doomsday scenarios in a sensational publication.

In politics, the media and science, this should be received as a great relief and lead to an immediate correction of climate policy. But the discussion is not taking place in Germany.

Special broadcast on ARD, special session of the German Bundestag, government statement by the government on the flawed foundations of the Climate Protection Act: None of this.

The climate bogeyman remains exaggerated, because it could be used to make wonderfully green and left-wing politics.

On April 7, 2026, 44 IPCC authors responsible for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate scenarios published a groundbreaking publication.

Under the leadership of Prof. Detlef van Vuuren, the scientists explained that the scenarios listed so far in the last two climate reports of 2013/2014 (AR5) and 2021-2023 (AR6), which should lead to temperature increases of up to five degrees Celsius in 2100, are “implausible”.

In these scenarios (RCP 8.5), it was assumed that CO2 emissions would more than triple over the course of this century.

Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses CO2 as the main climate factor in its models, this resulted in frightening temperature increases. According to the latest report (AR6), the RCP 8.5 model should be warmer by 4.4 to 5.7 degrees by 2100.

Read the full story here.

Now they’re coming for plastic

They tried it with CLIMATE. They tried it with COVID. It’s all about CONTROL.

Now, they’re coming for PLASTIC.

From CFACT

By Craig Rucker

They tried it with CLIMATE. They tried it with COVID. It’s all about CONTROL.

Now, they’re coming for PLASTIC.

Plastic is the great equalizer that made affordable goods available to all. Plastic is so ubiquitous, however, that the Left determined that if they can get a piece of it, they control everything.

Both Kevin Mooney and Melanie Collette report at CFACT.org that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is pushing back.

In a statement, Uthmeier said, “Environmental groups are pressuring corporations to abandon free market principles and raise prices on consumers for products they don’t want.”

“Contrary to what green activists would like the public to believe,” Mooney reports, “plastics come with significant benefits as a direct result of human innovation. They keep food fresh, alleviate waste, make products lighter and therefore more affordable. They also contribute to life-saving medical devices.

“If environmental activists turned government bureaucrats were genuinely interested in environmental improvements, they would focus on more efficient waste management, enhanced recycling infrastructure, and biodegradable innovations. But none of those solutions are on the table. Instead, the radicals push a top-down policy approach that suffocates the free market.”

Mooney quotes CFACT’s own Bonner Cohen saying, “What needs to be understood about ‘sustainable development’ is that what is being peddled is itself unsustainable. Absent government mandates, industry collusion, and interminable lawsuits, the alternatives to plastics could not stand on their own two feet. The marketplace, which reflects consumer preferences, is the best place to separate the sheep from the goats. Just as the PC vanquished the electric typewriter, and internet transmissions quashed the fax machine, superior products prevail over inferior ones. But this is an arena the anti-plastics lobby does not dare to enter. They know they will lose. Florida’s attorney general sees this game for what it is and is to be applauded for taking appropriate action. May other state AGs follow his example.”

CFACT’s Melanie Collette concludes that, “The message to the environmental, social, and governance establishment is becoming clear: If your “voluntary” frameworks function as mechanisms for coordinating market behavior and suppressing competition, then state attorneys general are prepared to treat them that way.”

Public officials such as AG Uthmeier have had enough of false flag Green operations designed to accomplish nothing except the expansion of left-wing funding and control.

People cannot afford another phony Green crusade.

CFACT has been pushing back against the Left’s moves to control business through schemes such as climate, DEI, and ESG. CFACT’s Nate Myers just nailed three big energy companies during their annual shareholder meetings and demanded answers.  Here’s the full story.

Two Distinct Routes Uncovered: Why Some La Niña Events Persist for Years

Multi-year La Niña events (sometimes called “double-dip” or lingering La Niñas) occur when cold conditions in the equatorial Pacific persist for two or more years, leading to prolonged climate impacts like droughts, floods, and temperature extremes in various regions.

Multi-year La Niña events (sometimes called “double-dip” or lingering La Niñas) occur when cold conditions in the equatorial Pacific persist for two or more years, leading to prolonged climate impacts like droughts, floods, and temperature extremes in various regions.

A recent study from researchers at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology and the University of Hawaii identifies two distinct mechanisms or pathways that allow these events to develop and linger, challenging the idea that they are mostly triggered only by a preceding extreme (super) El Niño.

Multi-year La Niñas can amplify and prolong regional climate extremes (e.g., droughts in some areas, wetter conditions in others). Understanding these dual pathways improves ENSO prediction, especially for events not directly following a massive El Niño. Related research also points to roles for rainfall-salinity feedbacks and long-term changes in ocean stratification that may make multi-year events more frequent.

A recent study from researchers at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology and the University of Hawaii identifies two distinct mechanisms or pathways that allow these events to develop and linger, challenging the idea that they are mostly triggered only by a preceding extreme (super) El Niño.

“Distinctive Routes for Multi-Year La Niña Formation” (Chen et al., 2026, Advances in Atmospheric Sciences) provides a nuanced framework for why some La Niña events persist for two or more years while others decay rapidly.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Distinctive Routes for Multi-Year La Niña Formation

“Distinctive Routes for Multi-Year La Niña Formation” is the title of a research paper published on May 15, 2026, in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences by lead author B. R. Chen and co-authors including T. Li, X. Pan, and J. Liu (affiliations include Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology and the University of Hawaii).

The traditional explanation emphasizes the ocean heat content (OHC) discharge from a preceding extreme (super) El Niño. This leads to persistent negative thermocline anomalies that sustain La Niña via the Bjerknes feedback loop: stronger trade winds → enhanced equatorial upwelling → cooler SSTs → even stronger winds.

This mechanism explains only ~30% of historical multi-year La Niña (myLN) events over the past century. The study identifies a second, dominant pathway for the majority (~70%).

The study identifies two distinctive pathways (or “routes”) for multi-year La Niña (myLN) events, where cold equatorial Pacific conditions persist for two or more years, as opposed to single-year events.

Classic Heat Discharge (Super El Niño Precursor)

  • Strong prior El Niño discharges upper-ocean heat.
  • Creates deep negative thermocline depth anomalies.
  • These anomalies resist warming, prolonging the cold phase through coupled ocean-atmosphere feedbacks.
  • Aligns with events like those following 1982–83 or 1997–98.

South Pacific Meridional Mode (SPMM) — The Overlooked Dominant Pathway

During the decaying spring of the first-year La Niña:

  • Meridionally extended (north-south) cold sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies develop, linked to a negative South Pacific Meridional Mode (SPMM).
  • These off-equatorial anomalies (stronger in the South Pacific) generate or strengthen equatorial easterly wind anomalies.
  • Enhanced easterlies drive:
    • Stronger equatorial upwelling of cold water.
    • Increased meridional divergence at the equator.
  • This slows the natural damping of the cold SST anomaly.
  • The cold conditions persist through the decaying summer.
  • They re-intensify in the following autumn through season-dependent coupled instability (stronger Bjerknes feedback in certain seasons).

Evidence:

  • Observational composites of myLN vs. single-year LN events.
  • Idealized atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) experiments that isolate the SPMM’s role in producing the critical equatorial easterlies.

Mechanistic Details and Seasonality

The SPMM pathway highlights extratropical-tropical interactions. The broader meridional structure of cold anomalies (unlike narrowly equatorial ones in single-year events) sustains the feedback.

Seasonality is crucial: spring SPMM anomalies set the stage, summer persistence occurs via wind-driven oceanic processes, and autumn re-development leverages peak coupled instability periods.

This route operates more independently of a massive prior El Niño, explaining many “non-canonical” multi-year events.

Broader Context and Implications

  • Complementary Mechanisms: Other recent work highlights rainfall-salinity feedbacks (reduced precipitation increases salinity, affecting density and mixing to sustain cooling) and changes in upper-ocean stratification that may increase myLN frequency. communities.springernature.com
  • Climate Change Links: Multi-year events have become more common recently and may increase further due to altered background states.
  • Prediction Value: Distinguishing routes could improve seasonal-to-interannual forecasts, as myLNs amplify and extend impacts (e.g., prolonged droughts in the Maritime Continent/Australia, altered precipitation in the Americas, hurricane modulation).
  • Distinctions from Related Work: This complements studies on North Pacific Meridional Mode (NPMM/PMM) influences or South Pacific Oscillation roles, emphasizing the South Pacific arm here.

The paper (DOI: 10.1007/s00376-026-5771-8, published May 15, 2026) uses reanalysis datasets (e.g., SST from ERSST, winds from ERA5) and model experiments for robustness. Full text is available via Springer or institutional access; supplementary materials include additional composites and experiment details.

This dual-route perspective refines ENSO theory by showing multiple pathways to persistence, moving beyond a one-size-fits-all recharge-discharge paradigm.

Published: Advances in Atmospheric Sciences

DOI: 10.1007/s00376-026-5771-8

Provided:  Chinese Academy of Sciences

Authors: Borui Chen, 
Tim Li, 
Xiao Pan & 
Jia Liu 

Abstract

A prevailing hypothesis for generating a multi-year La Niña (LN) compared to a single-year LN is the strong discharge of ocean heat content (OHC) associated with preceding extreme El Niño, but this mechanism explains only a small portion (∼30%) of the multi-year LN events during the past century. For the majority of multi-year LN events, it is found that the meridional extent of the cold SST anomaly in the tropical Pacific, particularly the South Pacific Meridional Mode (SPMM), during the LN decaying spring plays a critical role in prolonging the LN. Idealized atmospheric general circulation model experiments confirm the role of the SPMM in generating equatorial easterlies, which may help enhance oceanic upwelling and meridional divergence at the equator, slowing down the LN damping. As a result, the cold anomaly associated with LN persists throughout the decaying summer and re-develops in the following autumn via a season-dependent coupled instability. Thus, this study emphasizes the role of the SPMM in causing multi-year LN events.