The Worst Case Is Still on the Table
Why removing RCP8.5 from the National Climate Assessment would be a serious mistake
Science
The Climate Brink.
Andrew Dessler and Zeke Hausfather on climate science, global warming, and a sustainable future.
Recent essays
26 of 26What we can and cannot say about climate change and the Nepal disaster
Formal attribution is premature, but the collapse happened on a rapidly warming mountain in a valley losing its ice
Is this El Niño a glimpse of a future, hotter Earth?
There are important differences between long-term global warming and El Niño warming
♫ Smoke Gets in Your Eyes ♫
and your lungs, your blood stream, your brain, just about everywhere
The real energy use of agentic AI
Agents use about 600x more energy than simple AI prompts
Fixing one of climate’s worst plots
the 1930s were hot over the U.S. Midwest, but not that hot
Why Hansen may end up being right about 2026
Whether 2026 sets a new record is increasingly likely to be a spit decision between different groups
Wildfires are remaking the world
With great sorrow, we watch as the Earth is rebuilt into a different, warmer planet.
Raw Data, Wrong Answers
What happens to the 1930s temperature record after correcting measurement biases and station coverage
Hot days, cold thermometers
Why a viral graph on US days above 95F is misleading and overstates regional warmth
Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest management
Higher fire season temperatures are strongly correlated with increased area burned
The Strongest El Niño Ever
With all the July runs in, dynamical models give a ~90% chance of a record-setting event
What drove the early 20th century warming?
Human activity, natural forcings, and internal variability explain the global temperature rise between 1900 and 1945
Deadly heat wave in France shows the future of climate risk
Perhaps the victory lap for getting rid of RCP8.5 was premature
Where do heat waves come from?
Sunny days aren't all they're cracked up to be
How climate change influences extreme weather
How science shows us how warming makes heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires more likely or more severe — and why this science is becoming a major public-policy battleground.
The Merchants of Doubt are coming for Extreme Event Attribution science
Doubt is still their product
Plateauing CO2 emissions have slowed atmospheric growth
CO2 concentrations have continued to increase – but more slowly than it otherwise would have
How Science Works
a talk I gave on the Climate and Weather Livestream
Nobody knows the future of energy
coal collapsed, renewables boomed, and the forecasts mostly missed it
On the death of RCP8.5
We should celebrate progress, but not overstate it
Higher warming predictions for 2026 and 2027
An update to my December estimates of global temperatures over the next two years
Transition risk: The human cost of net zero
stranded assets and ghost factories
We're scientists. We know the climate's changing. And we know why.
It was reported in the New York Times (gift link) that U.S.
How many people does heat actually kill?
It depends on how you count it
Climate risk explained
a chapter from my upcoming textbook