r/climatechange

One thing I can’t stop thinking about lately is whether we’re underestimating how unusual the current Pacific conditions actually are.

I just finished The Pacific Is Wrong and the author’s main point is basically that the developing 2026–2027 El Niño, as the news suggest, may be landing in an ocean state we don’t really have historical analogues for.

What really got to me was the discussion of how El Niño events have historically been tied to cascading droughts, crop failures, famines, wildfire conditions, and major disruptions across multiple regions at once. The book even references the late-19th-century El Niño-linked famines that contributed to tens of millions of deaths globally.

Not trying to be dramatic, but it genuinely left me wondering whether current forecasts are still treating these systems as more stable and predictable than they actually are.

And does anyone else have good models/databases/climate visualizations for living conditions in 20 years, 40 years, 60 years, etc.? TIA.