Image Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Public Domain
“The polar vortex, the ring of winds that help bottle up the planet’s coldest supply of air, is weakening dramatically. Major weather models expect a significant breakdown in a week or so — the earliest collapse ever recorded.” (Weather Watch, Bloomberg, Nov. 2, 2026)
This strange occurrence is happening 19-30 miles above the North Pole. Just imagine 150-250 mph westerly winds suddenly reversing and splitting apart. Indeed, the impact could be severe with potential climate-related surprises over upcoming months, extending far into the depths of winter.
Sudden Stratospheric Warming -SSW- is the protagonist. Temperatures can increase as much as +50°C (122°F) within a few days at high altitudes, disrupting the polar vortex, weakening its winds or reversing the direction. For example, any major collapse of the high-altitude polar vortex via Sudden Stratospheric Warming raises the possibility of severe weather outbreaks occurring near the Earth’s surface weeks later.
The question arises whether the celebrated, or maybe it should be dreaded (nobody really knows for sure), arrival of the powerful El Niño is behind this? The Met Office/London claims the relationships between El Niño and the polar vortex may be at work, as El Niño’s tropical Pacific temperatures can influence atmospheric waves that travel upwards into the stratosphere.
El Niño Largest in 1,000 Years
“The current El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years and will pile extra heat into an atmosphere in which temperatures are already rising rapidly due to human-caused global heating. This double whammy means 2027 is expected to ‘blow apart’ previous records and become the hottest year ever recorded.” (Jaw-dropping El Niño Bursts Through Temperature Record Months Before Peak, The Guardian, Sept. 21, 2026)
The Climate System is Broken but ‘the World’ Already Knows
Highly unusual destructive climate behavior is indicative of the human impact throwing everything off kilter, especially a monster level of CO2 spewing into the atmosphere, which is responsible for 70-80% of global warming. In turn, the Arctic heats up 2-3 times the global average whilst tossing, turning, twisting the jet streams into a tizzy, at times morphing into bizzarro images like spaghetti. Ipso facto, the earliest collapse ever recorded.
Even mainstream news has picked up on the treacherous climate system, e.g. according to a CBS News Report: Climate Change Pushed Earth to its Limits in 2026 as Certain ‘Vital Signs’ Reach Record Extremes, Report Says, d/d October 14, 2026: “Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond,’ the report said. ‘Across the globe, extreme heat, floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires are no longer rare events but defining features of a changing planet.”
The CBS News Report further states: “A Record Year – July 2026 broke records as the warmest month ever for the contiguous United States, while the country as a whole was experiencing what turned out to be the hottest summer it had ever seen. Globally, ocean temperatures also reached new heights in July, the report said, while data show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher now than at any other time in the last 2 million years. Heat waves scorched Europe, killing an estimated 14,000, and baked portions of the U.S., too, fueling wildfires that burned millions of acres of land.”
Meantime, with a fully informed world of a dramatically (scary) changing climate system, what is going to be done about it? After all, with record amounts of renewables installed these past few years, fossil fuels still account for roughly 80% of world energy production, resulting in CO2 setting yearly records, every year like clockwork. Based upon numerous studies, this relationship is not going away anytime soon, unless a renewal of the Paris 2015 agreement amongst 195 nations manages to get deadly serious about fossil fuel CO2 emissions.
News reports of a broken climate system “Pushing Beyond Life-Support Systems” some decades ago would have likely prompted leaders of the world to call emergency meetings to do whatever’s necessary, like the Marshall Plan post WWII. Umm- this, in fact, happened at Paris in 2015 when 195 nations agreed to take measures to limit/reduce CO2 to prevent exceeding +1.5°C above pre-industrial to catastrophic levels of climate disruption and ecosystem collapses. Well, so sorry, it backfired, big time, the reverse of the 195-nation agreement; it couldn’t be worse, to wit:
Global Annual CO2 Emissions
1975 – 16.0 gigatons (billion metric tons)
2000 – 25.0 gigatons (56% increase in 25 years)
2026 – 42.4 gigatons (70% increase in 25 years)
This is amazing, as the wheels come off Paris ’15.
Another COP Meeting… Türkiye’s Opportunity
To the rescue, COP31 (the UN annual climate Conference of the Parties) of nations of the world starts November 9th thru the 20th held in Antalya, Türkiye on the heels of unbelievably calamitous climate disasters of 2026, like Nepal’s cascading glacier, like Europe’s major commercial waterways nearly drying up, like the lowest levels ever of the two largest reservoirs of the Colorado River System, like the nerve-rattling shocking discovery of dry drill holes at the farthest ends of America’s largest aquifer, Ogalala with 49.5% of the lower states in drought conditions (according to the U.S. Drought Monitor), the table has been set for affirmative policies, with teeth, to contain CO2, which all previous annual two-week COP get-togethers of 30,000-70,000 scientists, economists, policy wonks, presidents, prime ministers have never successfully accomplished. Will they do something truly constructive, with teeth, about CO2, or will the human-generated wildest climate system of all time since humans first discovered fire continue to threaten out-of-the-blue unexpected ecosystem collapses?
Somebody better hurry up with something remarkably constructive because…
The Planet is Drying Out
According to Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 30% of global land surface is in drought versus 10% in the 1990s, see: Extreme Drought Areas Treble in Size Since 80s, BBC World Service, Oct. 30, 2024, or The New Normal: 2025 Data Reveals a Fundamental Shift in Global Drought, Down to Earth, April 21, 2026.
The ‘structural shift’ mentioned in the study is extremely, extremely troubling: “A key finding of the study is a structural shift in the mechanisms driving drought. The driving mechanism of drought was transitioning from traditional precipitation deficits to a pattern dominated by ‘evaporative demand’ — even without extreme rainfall shortages.” Moreover, that trend is accelerating. This may become the biggest most dangerous climate issue of the 21st century.
Did somebody say something about “an emergency at hand”?
Meanwhile, will continuation of ‘sudden ecosystem collapses’ become so severe that the public turns rebellious, extremely angry, incensed beyond belief, infuriated to no end, totally enraged or so royally pissed off that there’s no end in sight for what happens next!
