Category: Nation & World

This year’s record-smashing El Niño will do more than just shift and enhance patterns of heat, extreme rainfall, and drought around the world.

It will also give the planet a preview of the late 2030s.

That’s because this El Niño will act like a climate time machine, temporarily pushing global temperatures to levels that might not otherwise be reached for another decade or so.

According to an analysis by climate scientist Zeke Hausfather that was shared with the Washington Post, there’s around a 95% chance that 2027 will become Earth’s hottest year on record — soaring past the last record in 2024 — because the combination of El Niño and climate change could spike global temperatures to around 3.17 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial averages.

Described as “stunning” by Hausfather, who researches and analyzes the climate for Stripe, Carbon Brief, and Berkeley Earth, this value would be so far above the warming trend of the past decade that it could bring global temperatures to levels not otherwise expected under that trend until around 2037.

“I’m not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures — on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event,” wrote Hausfather on X.

It’s currently close to a coin flip whether 2026 would become the warmest year on record, according to Hausfather’s analysis, which considers the average of several different temperature data sets. It’s possible that 2026 sets a record in some, but not all, of these data sets.

Jim Hansen, director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions at Columbia University, said he expects 2026 to become the warmest year, but to hold that crown only until 2027 exceeds it.

There is a much stronger signal for record warmth in 2027 because increasing air temperatures caused by El Niño lag slightly behind increasing ocean temperatures.

A global temperature of 1.76 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in 2027 would be about 0.29 degrees Celsius higher than what’s expected based on the warming trend of the past decade.

According to Hausfather’s temperature predictions for next year, the middle 50% of forecasts range from 1.67 degrees Celsius to 1.85 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average.

At the high end of that range, global temperatures in 2027 would jump roughly 13 years ahead of the recent warming trend, reaching levels that might otherwise become typical around 2040. The low end would represent a 7-year boost, to around 2034.

Hausfather said that this El Niño event is happening on top of a “strong acceleration in the rate of warming associated with continued emissions of greenhouse gases.”

Both Hausfather and Hansen also mentioned that decreasing atmospheric aerosols — which have historically offset some warming — are contributing to the acceleration in warming.

Although Hausfather expects 2028 to be cooler than 2027, he added that “human emissions are adding a permanent El Niño worth of heat to the climate system each decade.”

In other words, global temperatures in 2027 will take a big but temporary upward stairstep, and they are unlikely to permanently continue at or above those levels for now.

These temperature increases will also have consequences for atmospheric water vapor. Because the water vapor-carrying capacity of air increases at a rate of 7% per degree Celsius, it’s possible — if not likely — that 2027 also sets a new global moisture record, surpassing 2024. In 2025, the Post mapped the planet’s rising moisture zones and showed how they are closely connected to an increasing risk for rainfall extremes.

The role of El Niño

During El Niño, huge stores of ocean heat from the western Pacific spread eastward, eventually reaching the west coast of South America. Thunderstorm activity shifts with that warmth, transferring heat from the ocean and pumping it high into the atmosphere. Winds and atmospheric circulation then redistribute that heat beyond the tropical Pacific and around the globe, raising global temperatures.

That’s why strong El Niño events often appear as an upward stairstep in long-term plots of global temperatures.

But this El Niño isn’t just going to be strong. Boosted by the planet’s long-term warming trend, it’s probably going to dwarf the six strongest that came before it in 2015, 1997, 1982, 1972, 1888, and 1877 — the latter contributing to a global famine that caused 3% to 4% of the global population to perish.

Ocean temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific, where El Niño’s strength is measured, have already broken records for 75 days straight.

That streak isn’t expected to end anytime soon.

Temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean may surge more than 7.2 degrees F above average by December, breaking the previous record.

Those weather effects will vary from place to place.

But the temperature spike will briefly push the entire planet into its warmer future.

The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the war with Iran, or roughly 25% of its fleet, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The Reaper is used to conduct surveillance and targeted strikes, and it can cost between $30 million to $50 million depending on the type of sensors and weapons it carries, according to the Air Force. The potential taxpayer cost of recent losses is over $1.3 billion for that weapon system alone.

The aircraft have seen heavy use around the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route that has become a major flash point in the conflict — and a key obstacle to negotiating a lasting peace deal. But the drones fly slowly and often at low altitudes, making them relatively easy targets for Iran’s military and its regional proxies in Yemen and Iraq.

A fourth U.S. official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Pentagon data, said that not all of the lost Reapers were shot down. An unspecified number crashed after their operators’ communications link to the drones failed, the official said.

The Reaper joins a growing list of U.S. weapons and munitions that have been drained by the Iran war and years of American military support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. As the Washington Post and others have reported, the shortages have constrained President Donald Trump’s military options as tensions with Iran remain high.

The Pentagon, which declined to comment for this article, has consistently denied reports that its weapons stockpiles are running low. At the same time, the Trump administration has asked Congress for tens of billions of dollars in funding to offset costs incurred by the Iran war and to replenish supplies.

As the Post reported last week, Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the state of the U.S. stockpile. The encounter occurred July 31, on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

The shortages have appeared to embolden Iran, which has intensified its demands for control of the Strait of Hormuz and reparations for damage the country has sustained since Trump ordered the start of hostilities on Feb. 28.

There were approximately 185 Reapers in the U.S. military fleet — 165 in the Air Force and 20 in the Marine Corps — before the conflict began, according to public budget data and the services. That figure does not include Reapers operated by U.S. intelligence agencies. To date, none of the Marines’ Reapers have been lost, a spokesperson, Lt. Col. Joshua Benson, said in a statement. Those operate primarily in the Asia-Pacific.

In May, Lt. Gen. David Tabor, a senior Air Force officer at the Pentagon, told the Senate that the number of remaining drones had fallen to about 135. At the time, Tabor told lawmakers he was “concerned” about the losses and that the Air Force was exploring how to quickly replenish its fleet.

The Pentagon is phasing out the General Atomics-produced Reaper and envisions a replacement fleet of less expensive armed surveillance drones that can swarm their targets.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to shore up lawmaker support for a $67 billion Iran war supplemental budget that it says is vital to restocking the Pentagon’s arsenal. Even if Congress approves the funding, it will be years before stockpiles depleted by the conflict in Iran and the munitions sent to Ukraine are reconstituted.

Hegseth told the Senate in July that the Pentagon would have to curtail military trainings without a quick infusion of additional funding as the Iran war strains the defense budget. He estimated that the conflict would cost $37.5 billion through the end of September, though that total does not include the cost of rebuilding U.S. bases in the Middle East damaged by Iranian strikes.

Republicans in Congress are divided on the best strategy to secure the war-related funding and have left Washington for their August recess.

This week, the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank released a report examining the military’s effort to increase production of critical munitions. It found that in some cases the Pentagon’s plans have “key dependencies,” including a significant expansion of the defense industry’s factory output.

For example, it could take years to replenish Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors used throughout the war, the report found. The missile defends against incoming ballistic missiles and, as the Post reported previously, U.S. forces have used hundreds of them during the conflict.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s maximum production rate is 96 a year — but the Pentagon seeks 857 of them in next year’s defense budget, and almost 2,600 total over the next five years. At current production rates, it would require “approximately 27 years” to the fulfill the request, AEI found.

It takes almost three years to manufacture a single THAAD interceptor, said AEI senior fellow Todd Harrison, the report’s author.

“Even if you ordered them today, delivery wouldn’t be until President Trump leaves office,” Harrison said.

Other U.S. munitions reviewed by AEI had similar timelines, the report showed.

Although Hegseth has met with many of the companies responsible for building key munitions, and secured what the Pentagon calls framework agreements to increase production, there are no contracts or funding yet for those firms to move forward.

U.S. intelligence officials were skeptical of an Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump that was relayed by Israel and prompted an extraordinary clandestine maneuver that saw him secretly fly out of Turkey in an alternate military aircraft, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said.

The assassination threat was relayed by the Israeli government to the CIA, where analysts did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials, one of the officials said.

Another official called the reports of threats against Trump’s life “Israeli-derived, not U.S.-generated, and viewed as low confidence.”

The doubts in some quarters about an imminent threat to the president add a new element to the White House’s decision last month, first reported by the Washington Post, to shield Trump’s whereabouts as he departed a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8.

As the Post first reported this week, after concerns arose about whether the new 747-8 plane gifted by Qatar had sufficient security measures to transport the president out of a potentially hostile environment, Trump boarded a legacy Air Force One in Ankara. But he secretly left that aircraft and was shuttled in an airport catering truck to a third plane, an Air Force C-32A, that flew him and a few key aides to Britain.

The White House on Wednesday did not directly answer questions about the intelligence the United States received or how it was perceived by U.S. officials.

“As the President has said, he has faced numerous threats on his life, including ones from Iran, and every measure is taken to ensure his safety,” a U.S. official said in a statement, speaking, like others in this report, on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “The United States Secret Service’s core mission is protecting the President, which they achieved.”

The CIA declined to comment. The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for details.

Ultimately, the White House and the Secret Service appear to have decided they could take no chances.

The Iranian threat to kill Trump and other senior U.S. officials has been a major concern since the 2020 U.S. assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force. Those worries have only grown since the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in February along with scores of other top officials at the start of the Iran war.

Trump has survived three known assassination plots dating back to his 2024 presidential campaign, although there is no known link between any of the suspects in those instances and Iran.

Despite questions about the Israeli intelligence, the elaborate plan enacted by the Secret Service in Ankara was done out of an abundance of caution, the first U.S. official said. “The Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances,” the official said. “They did what they had to do.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported last month that Israel had shared intelligence with the U.S. government on the Iranian threat.

The aircraft that ferried Trump from Ankara to Britain’s Mildenhall air base was escorted by F-16 fighter jets, according to two U.S. officials and other material reviewed by the Post.

Trump, in his first public comments on the clandestine operation, said Tuesday night that the decision for him to take an alternate airplane was made by the Secret Service.

“It’s really just up to Secret Service. I just follow what they like to do,” Trump told reporters. “They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety. … I do what they say.”

Some U.S. intelligence officials saw Israel’s sharing of the warning about threats to Trump’s life as designed less to inform than to influence the president’s decision-making and U.S. policy in the region, a current and a former U.S. official said.

Israel views Iran as by far its most urgent near-term threat. But it views Turkey as a medium- to long-term threat and is anxious about warming ties between Washington and Ankara, bolstered by the personal rapport between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the current official said.

It “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it,” the former official familiar with the matter said.

This person said he understood that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was briefed on the Israeli threat intelligence, as well as the subterfuge planned by the Secret Service, and nonetheless opted to board the legacy Air Force One, which presumably would have been a target for Iran.

Another U.S. official familiar with the security discussions also questioned the seriousness of the threat, noting that tens of thousands of Turkish security personnel were incorporated into the NATO summit.

Democrats have pushed the administration to provide more clarity on the extraordinary deception operation.

“I am very curious about the extent to which the Israeli-provided intelligence was not only credible but independently verifiable,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) told the Post. “I have no doubt that Iran would like to see the president gone, but this all seems a little fantastical.”