“Some agents gave themselves names — a particularly industrious one referred to itself as PHASEONE10841 — and assumed leadership roles within the group, assigning jobs and research projects to smaller teams of agents and supervising their progress.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/t...

Why the Hugging Face Hack Should Make You Worry More About A.I. (Gift Article)

The attack by an aggressive “collective” of OpenAI agents shows the danger of artificial intelligence systems that organize themselves.

nytimes.com

Hurricane Lowell is a very serious concern for Hawaii, and we explain the forecast and what will influence what actualizes this evening. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic? Back to sleep. Below or at theeyewall.com.

Hawaii back in the news, as yet another Pacific storm looms

Hurricane Lowell represents a serious threat to the islands

theeyewall.substack.com

The world had warmed ~1.2C in 2018 (SR15) & we now admit, 8 years later, exceeding 1.5C is unavoidable. The world is ~1.5C today, & warming ~0.3C/decade. Can we say that <1.8C is possible? I don't think we realise how close we are! 5/

What a remarkable view. A hurricane trio in the Pacific. Lowell, Karina and Marie.

I loved this explainer on how governments’ bond markets work. Many articles skip over the details and the financially ignorant must untangle them like a student learning algebra from a teacher who skips over crucial steps in equation solving. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/b...

The Word Is Bond (Gift Article)

We explain what is happening in the bond market.

nytimes.com

One of several eyebrow-raisers in here. (Happy Holidays?) "California’s highest king tides are predicted on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, with another in late January. Water levels will probably rival the highest in recorded history, even without a nearby storm."

Anthony Edwards@edwardsanthonyb.bsky.social · 2d ago

An El Niño-induced coastally-trapped Kelvin wave will likely raise water levels about 9-14 inches (relative to 1993-2025 averages) along the California coast in early October. Water temperatures will also increase. The sudden increase will be as much as “the entire climate change anomaly in one go”

August 2026 was the warmest August on record in the the Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 dataset, at 1.65C above preindustrial levels. This beat the prior record set in August 2024 by a fairly wide margin (~0.14C).

Good thread on #Marie! Projected outcomes? All over the map. It will be interesting to see what happens and which models prove to be more accurate.

Daniel Swain@weatherwest.bsky.social · 2d ago

Update: The tropical weather feature of great interest--Tropical Storm (& soon hurricane) #Marie--has now developed. Marie's track will dictate potential CA impacts over Labor Day; uncertainty remains high, w/significant impacts possible (but direct landfall unlikely). [Thread]

Over the past 50 yrs, which is essentially the entire satellite era, the median date of 1st hurricane formation is Aug 6 and latest is Sep 11. Only 6 of those 50 years had the first hurricane occur in Sep. The odds of a new record-latest first hurricane formation are looking pretty high right now...

And it doesn't take a hurricane to bring a storm surge in excess of 4' to the Starbase Louisiana; 5 of the top 10 water levels since records began in 2005 were not from a hurricane. With sea level rise accelerating and hurricanes getting stronger/wetter, SpaceX will have a tough time here.

Given the very high level of interest, this turned into a 90-minute super-session on the wide range of potential outcomes (currently ranging from benign to quite high-impact) regarding a tropical storm near California this weekend. The recording is now available!

Daniel Swain@weatherwest.bsky.social · 4d ago

On Monday, Aug 31 at 3pm PT, I'll have a live virtual office hour focused solely on potential for an East Pacific tropical storm or hurricane to affect California next weekend (mostly likely indirectly, but with slight chance of a more direct approach). .

This is absolutely crazy — wet-bulb of 33°C is basically unsurvivable. Also, it very rarely occurs in TX, so this regulation is not going to do much. This paper by @sciencedjv.bsky.social says that the critical temperature is closer to 31.5°C. journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10....

Critical environmental limits for young, healthy adults (PSU HEAT Project) | Journal of Applied Physiology | American Physiological Society

Critical environmental limits are those combinations of ambient temperature and humidity above which heat balance cannot be maintained for a given metabolic heat production, limiting exposure time, an...

journals.physiology.org

On Monday, Aug 31 at 3pm PT, I'll have a live virtual office hour focused solely on potential for an East Pacific tropical storm or hurricane to affect California next weekend (mostly likely indirectly, but with slight chance of a more direct approach). .

Will a tropical storm affect California next weekend? Maybe, but most likely indirectly... - YouTube

The latest in a recurring series of live, virtual, & interactive #weather and #climate-focused "office hours" hosted by Dr. Daniel Swain. 08/31/2026 topic: I...

youtube.com

The MapQuest App lists both of them correctly and has publicly told the mad king he can get bent. I’ve made a decision about my new favorite driving-directions app. (Both 🏞️’s from Mapquest’s mobile app, which seems a bit janky but hey it gives you directions.)

For the record, I downloaded the app a few minutes ago. And I’m increasingly using my Proton Mail email acct. for no particular reason at all.

Laura Routh@laurarouth.bsky.social · 4d ago

Ahem: thank you for your attention to this matter! Except I should have used all caps. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Ahem: thank you for your attention to this matter! Except I should have used all caps. www.latimes.com/california/s...

'We're not changing it': SoCal-based Mapquest takes stand against Trump's 'Lake America'

Like a voice of dissent from 2005, the mapping site holds firm to Lake Ontario despite Trump's executive order stemming from his escalating trade war with Canada.

latimes.com

Word of the day/night: Demon.👺 Anyone else still playing Wordle? My 22 yo son and I always play Wordle right after midnight and before going to bed, even when he’s at his dad’s place. He just texted me with tonight’s word.

The Pacific Institute tracks water-related violence including where #water or water infrastructure trigger conflicts or been weapons or targets of conflict. This graph shows the recent dramatic increase in the number of events. The Institute’s Water and Peace Initiative: pacinst.org/water-and-pe...

Permafrost might not be your first thought when thinking mountains. But most of them are stabilized by a network of it that acts like natural cement holding the slopes together. The research shaft in the first image used to be 6ft high and is now filled with re-frozen water from melting permafrost.

I'll host a short-notice, "pop-up" livestream TODAY, Aug 27 at 4pm PT to discuss: 1) What is known about the human impacts and geophysical causes of the Himalayan glacier collapse disaster, and 2) Severe humid heatwave/dry t-storms/fire risk in California

Pop-up livestream: Himalayan glacier collapse disaster and California heat/lightning/fire update - YouTube

The latest in a recurring series of live, virtual, & interactive #weather and #climate-focused "office hours" hosted by Dr. Daniel Swain. 08/27/2026 topic: T...

youtube.com

“The atmosphere, ocean, biosphere and cryosphere (frozen water) aren’t really distinct elements. That becomes more obvious with each passing decade as we try to predict and model these different Earth systems and discover we can’t do it very well unless we connect them.” @weatherwest.bsky.social

Daniel Swain@weatherwest.bsky.social · 2w ago

I enjoyed my podcast conversation with David Helvarg on The Rising Tide podcast--but this edited transcript succinctly emphasizes the deep and fundamental relationship between global oceans and the Earth's climate. We do live on a water planet, after all!

“It’s funny to wake up relieved that you’re about to take a beating. We will not go along to get along.” Integrity comes to mind. Time to learn, or in my case, relearn French. The Canadians have provided the motivation I lacked.

Stephen Marche@stephenmarche.bsky.social · 2w ago

My piece in @nytimes.com about how Canada said no. Proud of this one. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/o...

Wild that this shit is still going on -- university administrators just plowing money into AI, with no particular vision or goal, against the wishes of most professors & students, even as money is desperately needed for other things.

Calif. colleges bought everyone ChatGPT. No one knows what to do with it.

California professors say they are left improvising as the CSU partners with OpenAI.

sfgate.com

“We are near the peaks of those cycles this year. That means that around Christmastime, California will see some very strong king tides that will superpose on the high sea levels caused by El Niño.” —Mark Merrifield, Scripps On top of already higher seas from 🔥🌍🏭 www.latimes.com/california/s...

As 3 dangers converge, California's coast faces rare winter of big waves, erosion, flooding

A rare convergence of a powerful El Niño, super king tides and sea level rise spurred by climate change could menace California with record coastal flooding this winter.

latimes.com

New Weather West Post: Major SoCal late August heatwave this week, with modest, but growing, possibility of tropical storm remnants affecting CA in September. Plus: Why parts of SoCal could *potentially* see more extreme heat than is currently in forecast.

Major SoCal late August heatwave this week, with modest but growing possibility of tropical storm remnants affecting CA in September - Weather West

August 23, 2026 - Daniel Swain - Across Southwest, a mid-late summer characterized by exceptional and sustained overnight warmth Following a record warm winter across most of the American West, it has also been a record (or near-record) warm summer across most of the interior West (and fire season from the Southern Rockies to the Great Basin to the Pacific Northwest has #

weatherwest.com

Because of hotter and larger fires:“Recent studies estimate that as much as 40 percent of Western conifer forests will turn into shrubland by 2100 as a result.” 2100 feels awfully close www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/c...

Wildfires Are Turning Forests in the American West Into Shrubland (Gift Article)

Towering woodlands in the West are being permanently replaced by tracts of spiky shrubs. Conditions “just aren’t normal anymore,” one researcher said.

nytimes.com

“Under the wrong conditions, undisciplined princely appetites can transform into madness.” This piece by @himself.bsky.social captures what I’ve been thinking but lacked the skill to say. h/t @jamellebouie.net ‘s newsletter www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-politi...

The political economy of billionaire derangement

The passions are devouring the interests

programmablemutter.com

Adapting to climate change is and will be hard and expensive, more so for some than others. It’s heartbreaking. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/u...

Desperation Mounts as Thousands in Indiana Endure 10 Days Without Power (Gift Article)

Floods from powerful thunderstorms devastated Gary, where a third of residents live below the poverty line and full restoration isn’t expected until next week.

nytimes.com

In case you missed it, the recording is available at the link below! I ended up diving into how the geography and geology of Hawaii's Big Island raises the risk of catastrophic debris flows, as have occurred this week, as well as the broader Western wildfire & El Niño update.

Daniel Swain@weatherwest.bsky.social · 2w ago

On Tuesday, Aug 18th at noon PT, I'll have a "lunch hour" livestream covering a wide range of topics, including Hurricane Lala's severe flash flood-related impacts on Hawaii's Big Island, rebuilding heat/wildfire risk across interior West, and El Niño.

An incredibly helpful explainer on the workings, history, and global impacts of ENSO and the significance of the 2026-27 ‘super El Niño’ Carbon Brief found that “ … 96% of runs predict that this event will be the strongest in the modern observational record.”

Carbon Brief@carbonbrief.org · 2w ago

NEW – Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather ✍️ written by @rtmcswee.carbonbrief.org & @daisydunne.carbonbrief.org 🎨 designed by @tomoprater.carbonbrief.org & @jjgoodman.bsky.social Read here ➡️ buff.ly/CIZnhHs