Thomas Lamb  ·  June 10, 2026  ·  Japan Meteorological Agency — Official Record

It Has Begun.
JMA Declares El Niño
Today. June 10, 2026.

Japan Meteorological Agency · El Niño Monitoring Report No. 405 · Issued 14:00 JST June 10, 2026
Source: https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/press/2606/10b/elnino202606.html

At 14:00 JST today, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued Monitoring Report No. 405 — a formal declaration that El Niño has begun. Not a watch. Not a probability forecast. A declaration. The JMA, one of the world's most rigorous meteorological authorities, has put its name on a start date: spring 2026.

The report projects El Niño continuing through autumn with 100% probability — the highest confidence rating the JMA uses. It forecasts the Niño monitoring index rising further through winter, when El Niño events typically reach their peak intensity.

Below is the full data from the JMA report, translated and visualised, with context from the framework laid out in this series.

Official JMA Declaration — Monitoring Report No. 405

エルニーニョ現象が発生しているとみられます
"El Niño is considered to have occurred"

Issued: June 10, 2026 (Reiwa 8) — Japan Meteorological Agency, Atmospheric and Ocean Department

Official finding: El Niño characteristics have appeared in both ocean and atmosphere across the equatorial Pacific. El Niño is considered to have begun from spring 2026.

Forecast: El Niño will continue through autumn — 100% probability. El Niño often develops and reaches peak intensity heading into winter. During El Niño winters, temperatures near Japan tend to run above normal.

Next report: July 10, 2026 at 14:00 JST

Key Data Points — May 2026 Actuals

Niño Monitoring Index (May)

+1.2°C

Above baseline. Threshold for El Niño declaration is +0.5°C sustained for 6 months. Already more than double the threshold.

5-Month Moving Average (Mar)

+0.4°C

Rising trend continuous. The 5-month average just crossed the +0.5°C declaration threshold — triggering today's official announcement.

Southern Oscillation Index (May)

−1.5

Sharply negative — from +1.3 in November to −1.5 in May. Negative SOI = weakening trade winds = El Niño atmospheric coupling confirmed.

Continuation Probability

100%

JMA projects El Niño persisting through autumn 2026 at maximum confidence. Further development toward winter peak expected.

12-Month Niño Monitoring SST Record — Jun 2025 to May 2026

The JMA report contains the full monthly SST record for the Niño monitoring region (NINO.3). The numbers below are the actual figures from Report No. 405 — the raw data behind today's declaration.

Month	SST (°C)	Anomaly vs Baseline	SOI	Status
Jun 2025	26.4	−0.2°C	+0.7	Below baseline
Jul 2025	25.8	−0.1°C	+0.9	Near normal
Aug 2025	24.9	−0.3°C	+0.6	Below baseline
Sep 2025	24.4	−0.5°C	0.0	La Niña boundary
Oct 2025	24.5	−0.5°C	+1.2	La Niña boundary
Nov 2025	24.5	−0.5°C	+1.3	La Niña boundary
Dec 2025	24.5	−0.6°C	−0.2	Below baseline — trough
Jan 2026	25.2	−0.4°C	+0.9	Turning point
Feb 2026	26.5	+0.1°C	+1.0	Crossing baseline ↑
Mar 2026	27.5	+0.3°C	+1.0	Rising rapidly ↑
Apr 2026	28.3	+0.7°C	−0.6	El Niño threshold crossed ↑
May 2026	28.4	+1.2°C	−1.5	⚠ DECLARATION ↑

SST Anomaly Trend — The Acceleration

The speed of this transition from La Niña boundary (−0.6°C in December) to El Niño declaration (+1.2°C in May) — 1.8°C in five months — is the key story in this data.

Jun '25

−0.2°C

Sep '25

−0.5°C

Dec '25

−0.6°C

Jan '26

−0.4°C

Feb '26

+0.1°C

Mar '26

+0.3°C

Apr '26

+0.7°C

May '26 ▲

DECLARED

+1.2°C

Zero line at 42% | El Niño threshold: +0.5°C sustained | Source: JMA Monitoring Report No. 405

The Turning Point — What Triggered This

The JMA report identifies exactly what flipped the system. From December 2025 through January 2026, the Niño monitoring index was sitting at its coolest point — −0.6°C, near La Niña boundary conditions. The Southern Oscillation Index was strongly positive (+1.3 in November), meaning trade winds were robust, holding warm water against the western Pacific near Indonesia and the Philippines.

Then the SOI collapsed — from +1.3 in November to −1.5 in May. A 2.8-point reversal in six months. The trade winds weakened dramatically across the central Pacific. The warm water that had been piled up against Indonesia's doorstep began its eastward migration. The Kelvin wave we documented in the previous posts is visible in the JMA's subsurface cross-section data — warm water at depth, moving east along the equator, from the Indian Ocean through to the central Pacific.

From JMA Report No. 405 — Key Translated Findings

Ocean state: SSTs across the entire equatorial Pacific are above normal, centred on the central and eastern Pacific. Subsurface ocean temperatures are also above normal across the full equatorial Pacific — centred on the central and eastern sections. The subsurface warm water is moving eastward.

Atmosphere state: Convective activity near the International Date Line is near normal, but lower-level easterly trade winds across the central equatorial Pacific are weaker than normal — the classic El Niño atmospheric signature now confirmed.

Western Pacific (Indonesia/Philippines region): Western Pacific tropical SSTs were near baseline in May. Forecast to fall below baseline through autumn. This is the heat drain — as El Niño builds eastward, the western Pacific cools below normal, suppressing rainfall over Indonesia and the Philippines.

Indian Ocean: Tropical Indian Ocean SSTs were below baseline in May. Forecast to remain near or below baseline through summer, then near or slightly above baseline in autumn.

Model forecast: The ocean-atmosphere coupled model projects the Niño monitoring SST continuing to rise through autumn, maintaining above-baseline values — driving El Niño to its peak intensity in winter 2026–27.

The western Pacific — the region above Earth's most volcanically active seafloor — is now forecast to run below its temperature baseline through autumn. The heat it accumulated over years has been declared officially absent. El Niño has claimed it.

— Thomas Lamb, interpreting JMA Report No. 405 within the submarine volcanic framework

Everything That Happened Today

June 10, 2026 — The Timestamp

▸  07:00 JST — Magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes off Mindanao, Philippines. Tsunami warning issued across southern Philippines, northern Indonesia, Malaysian Sabah.

▸  Morning — NMME July 2026 SST anomaly forecast published showing blazing orange-red across equatorial Pacific. Prof. Eliot Jacobson publishes Niño 3.4 chart showing 2026 tracking near top of 44-year envelope.

▸  14:00 JST — Japan Meteorological Agency issues Monitoring Report No. 405. Official declaration: El Niño has begun. Continuation through autumn: 100% probability.

▸  Background — 318 million people in crisis hunger. Fertilizer prices up 80%. Ocean Observatories Initiative being dismantled. NOAA research arm gutted. Tambora on elevated alert.

▸  Peak window — Winter 2026–27. Strongest El Niño in recorded history now the central forecast scenario.

What The JMA Data Adds To The Framework

The JMA report contains one line that deserves particular attention in the context of this series: the western Pacific tropical SST is forecast to run below baseline through autumn. This is the confirmation of the mechanism described in the previous posts.

The western Pacific warm pool — built over years, heated from above by solar radiation and trade winds, and from below by geothermal and hydrothermal activity from the most volcanically active seafloor on Earth — is now being drained. The JMA's coupled ocean-atmosphere model shows the warm water moving eastward along the equatorial subsurface, exactly as the Kelvin wave mechanism predicts.

What the JMA model does not account for — what no current operational forecast model accounts for — is the geothermal contribution to that warm pool's initial heat content. The question raised in 2004 remains open: how much of the energy now propagating eastward across the Pacific as the most powerful El Niño in living memory originated not from the atmosphere above, but from the mantle below?

Today's declaration does not answer that question. But it gives it an official start date. The experiment is now running. The data — what remains of it, after the OOI dismantling — will eventually tell us.

On The Record

June 10, 2026. That is the date on record. The JMA has spoken. The El Niño that will define the next 18 months of human history — its food systems, its weather patterns, its coral reefs, its monsoons, its wildfires — officially began in spring 2026 and was declared today.

The next JMA monitoring report will be issued July 10, 2026. By then, the system will have developed further. The Niño index will be higher. The trade wind weakening will be more pronounced. The western Pacific cooling — the drought signal for Indonesia and the Philippines — will be more visible.

We will be watching. With whatever instruments remain.

The Convergence Series — Thomas Lamb

Part I: Climate Science Revisited (2004) →

Part II: The Furnace Below — Magma, Ocean Heat & El Niño

Part III: Indonesia SST Deep Dive — 41 Years of Data

Part IV: Going Blind — Dismantling NOAA During a Super El Niño

Part V: It Has Begun — JMA Official Declaration, June 10 2026 (this post)

PRIMARY SOURCE: Japan Meteorological Agency — El Niño Monitoring Report No. 405, June 10, 2026 (Reiwa 8)
https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/press/2606/10b/elnino202606.html
Full PDF: elnino202606.pdf (3,064KB)
Translation and analysis: Thomas Lamb · Research assistance: Claude, Anthropic
Original framework: Climate Science Revisited, March 2004

Alaska Infrastructure · June 2026

Who Pays When Alaska's Big Projects Go Over Budget?

From a highway bypass that doubled in cost to an LNG pipeline hiding its real price tag — Alaskans keep getting the bill.

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There's a pattern in Alaska's biggest infrastructure projects, and it should make every voter uncomfortable. Projects get sold to the public with optimistic price tags. Costs explode mid-build. And by the time the real numbers come out, it's too late to say no.

We have a live example happening right now — two of them, actually.

Cooper Landing: The Warning Shot

The Cooper Landing Bypass — a 10-mile stretch of new highway on the Kenai Peninsula — broke ground in 2020 with an estimated price tag of around $350 million. Reasonable, for a complex mountain highway project.

By 2023, that estimate had more than doubled to $840 million. Completion was pushed from 2027 to 2032. The state scrambled for federal grants just to keep it on schedule.

$350M

Original estimate (2018)

$840M

Revised estimate (2023)

2032

New completion date

Taxpayers — state and federal — are on the hook for every dollar of that overrun. That's not a criticism of the project itself. It's a warning about what happens when rosy numbers substitute for honest accounting.

Alaska LNG: Same Playbook, Bigger Stakes

Now look at the Alaska LNG project, the proposed 800-mile gas pipeline from the North Slope to Cook Inlet. The developer, Glenfarne, took over the project from the state and has been seeking major tax breaks from the legislature.

For months, Glenfarne refused to tell legislators what the project would actually cost, claiming it could compromise supplier negotiations. The official state estimate — $46.2 billion — is based on numbers from 2018 and doesn't appear to account for years of inflation. One Alaska senator called it "complete garbage."

Only after a special session forced the issue did Glenfarne finally reveal its own estimate: between $44.5 billion and $54.5 billion.

Independent consultants told Alaska legislators that 2 out of 3 LNG projects worldwide come in over budget — by an average of 70%.

Run that math on the high end of Glenfarne's estimate: a 70% overrun on $54.5 billion is $38 billion in unexpected costs. The entire Alaska LNG project could end up costing close to $90 billion — roughly seven times the state's annual budget.

Who Bears the Risk?

Glenfarne says cost overruns won't be passed to Alaska consumers or the state. But the legislature's own consultant noted that protection isn't in writing yet. Until it is, it's a promise — not a guarantee.

Cooper Landing showed us what happens when projects outpace their budgets: the state goes hat-in-hand to Washington for discretionary grants, delays compound, and Alaskans wait longer for the infrastructure they were promised.

Alaska LNG is orders of magnitude larger. The consequences of the same pattern playing out aren't a delayed highway — they're generational fiscal damage to this state.

"Who pays if this goes over budget?"

That's the question every Alaskan should be asking their legislator before a single tax break is handed to Glenfarne. Demand the answer in writing — not in a presentation slide, not in a press release. In the contract.

Because if Cooper Landing taught us anything, it's that by the time you find out the real number, it's already too late.

Ask your legislator today. Find your Alaska state representative at akleg.gov and ask: what written protections exist to ensure Alaskans don't pay for Alaska LNG cost overruns?

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Sources: Alaska Public Media · Alaska Beacon · Anchorage Daily News · Peninsula Clarion · KDLL Public Radio

Thomas Lamb  ·  June 8, 2026  ·  Part III of the Convergence Series

Going Blind
Dismantling the Eyes of the Ocean
at the Worst Possible Moment

How the Trump administration's systematic destruction of NOAA and the Ocean Observatories Initiative is leaving the world without data during the most dangerous El Niño in recorded history.

On June 16 2026 — eight days from today — a research vessel will motor off the Oregon coast and physically haul a buoy out of the Pacific Ocean. It is one of more than 900 instruments being removed from the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $386 million deep-ocean monitoring network built over a decade that has given scientists their clearest view yet of what is happening beneath the ocean's surface. It is being dismantled not because it failed. It is being dismantled because the administration decided it was "wasted money" and "climate alarmist."

This is happening on the same week that NOAA confirmed a 98% probability of a Super El Niño forming — one that may be the strongest in recorded history. The same week that sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region hit levels not seen since the catastrophic 1997–98 event. The same week that a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Philippines. The same week that 318 million people entered crisis-level hunger.

We are going partially blind into the worst oceanic event of our lifetime. This post documents what has been destroyed, what it means, and who made that decision.

The Numbers

NOAA Budget Cut

$1.7B

Proposed reduction for FY2026. Previous budget was $6.7B. Congress partially resisted — final budget settled at $6.1B, still a significant cut.

Research Arm Cut

75%

Proposed cut to NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — the division that runs climate monitoring and ocean buoy networks.

OOI Sensors Being Removed

900+

Ocean Observatories Initiative instruments — buoys, profilers, gliders, subsurface moorings — being pulled from the Pacific and Atlantic.

OOI Cost to Build

$386M

10 years of construction and operation. The data it produced is irreplaceable — subsurface time series cannot be reconstructed retroactively.

A Timeline of Dismantling

EARLY 2025

Mass firings begin at NOAA

Hundreds of NOAA scientists fired or offered early retirement. Scores of university grant holders see contracts terminated. Contracts over $100,000 placed under personal review by the Secretary of Commerce. Weather balloon launches suspended at multiple stations including Albany and Kotzebue, Alaska.

APRIL 2025

14% research budget frozen mid-year

The administration spends $100 million less on NOAA research than Congress mandated — described internally as a "down payment" on plans to eliminate the research arm entirely. Former NOAA head Rick Spinrad says the White House is "maximising NOAA's losses."

MAY 2025

FY2026 budget proposes eliminating NOAA research entirely

White House budget proposes cutting NOAA by 25–30% overall and eliminating its entire research arm — the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. Five former National Weather Service directors publish an open letter warning the cuts would "essentially eliminate NOAA's research functions."

JULY 2025

Next-generation satellites cancelled

NOAA's satellite services assistant administrator placed on administrative leave. Critical next-generation geostationary weather satellite instruments cancelled — including ocean colour monitoring, lightning tracking, and air quality measurement systems described by the administration as "climate alarmist."

MARCH 2026

Congress partially blocks cuts — but damage continues

Congress approves a $6.1B NOAA budget, rejecting the most extreme proposals. But the National Center for Atmospheric Research — responsible for key hurricane and climate models — is targeted for dismantling. NOAA proposes permanently closing the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and its Hurricane Research Division, institutions with 50-year histories.

MAY 2026

Ocean Observatories Initiative ordered dismantled

NSF announces it will dismantle most of the $386M OOI network — removing instruments from waters off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland by 2027. The decision comes as El Niño Watch is formally declared. Scientists describe the timing as "absolutely myopic."

JUNE 16, 2026 — IN 8 DAYS

First buoy physically removed from the Pacific

A research vessel departs the Oregon coast to haul the first buoy out of the water. The removal cuts off a decade of continuous subsurface measurements at the exact moment El Niño is building. The data stream goes dark. It cannot be reconstructed.

What We Are Losing — Specifically

System	What It Does	Why It Matters Now	Status
Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI)	900+ deep-ocean sensors measuring subsurface temperature, oxygen, carbon, currents — data satellites cannot capture	The only window into subsurface El Niño development — the Kelvin wave heat reservoir invisible from space	BEING REMOVED
Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS)	Regional coastal buoy networks measuring ocean conditions along US coastlines	Monitors coastal sea level, heatwave conditions, fishery health, storm surge prediction	ZEROED OUT
Next-Gen Geostationary Satellites	Ocean colour, air quality, lightning tracking instruments for next satellite generation	Surface SST tracking for the Pacific — including the Coral Triangle warming we've been documenting	CANCELLED
NOAA Research Labs (12+ facilities)	Hurricane modelling, ocean-atmosphere coupling research, climate prediction	The El Niño forecast models themselves — the 98% probability figure — rely on this research infrastructure	CLOSURE PROPOSED
National Center for Atmospheric Research	Develops and maintains computer models for weather and climate prediction	Dropsonde technology, hurricane track models, seasonal climate forecasting	TARGETED FOR CLOSURE
Radiosonde Weather Balloon Network	Atmospheric data from surface to stratosphere — feeds all weather models globally	Without this data, El Niño atmospheric coupling signals are missed days earlier than they could be	LAUNCHES SUSPENDED
Argo Float Network (US contribution)	3,900 autonomous floats profiling ocean temperature and salinity globally to 2,000m depth	Primary subsurface data source for El Niño tracking — US funding contribution now in question	FUNDING AT RISK

"This will create an irreparable blind spot for our country in predicting earthquakes, fishery health, storm forecasting, coastal flooding and more."

— Chris Robbins, Ocean Conservancy, on the OOI dismantling

"This would push the United States back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership."

— Craig McLean, former acting chief scientist, NOAA

"This would take us back to the 1950s in terms of our scientific footing."

— Craig McLean, former director, NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

The Deeper Problem

The OOI and the broader NOAA monitoring network were not just watching the ocean's surface. They were watching what is happening beneath it — the subsurface heat reservoir, the Kelvin wave propagation, the thermocline depth changes that precede El Niño by months. Satellites see the skin of the ocean. The buoys see its bones.

For the framework I laid out in 2004 — that submarine volcanic and geothermal activity beneath the western Pacific is a primary, unaccounted driver of sea surface temperature — the loss of subsurface monitoring is particularly significant. The geothermal heat contribution enters the ocean from the bottom up. It shows up first in deep-water temperature profiles, in anomalous bottom-water warming, in localised thermocline disruptions above active volcanic zones. This is precisely the data the OOI was beginning to accumulate. That data stream is now being cut.

We will not simply have gaps in our forecast accuracy. We will have gaps in our understanding of what is actually driving the system — arriving at the worst possible moment, as the most energetic El Niño in living memory builds toward its peak.

The Convergence — June 8, 2026

▸  Super El Niño forming — 98% probability, peak Oct 2026–Jan 2027

▸  318 million people in crisis-level hunger before it peaks

▸  Magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Philippines today

▸  Ocean Observatories Initiative being physically dismantled — buoy removal begins June 16

▸  NOAA research arm gutted — hundreds of scientists fired

▸  Next-generation satellites cancelled

▸  Hurricane Research Division closure proposed

▸  Weather balloon network running degraded

Who Made This Decision and Why

The administration's own officials described the monitoring systems as "wasted money" and "climate alarmist." The White House budget document explicitly framed the cuts as gutting a "weaponized deep state." The satellite instruments cancelled were not exotic research tools — they were the next generation of the systems currently providing the SST data in our previous post. They were cancelled because they measure things the administration does not want measured.

This is not fiscal conservatism. The OOI cost $48 million per year to operate — roughly the cost of a single F-35 fighter jet — and provided irreplaceable data to every ocean-dependent industry in the United States: shipping, fisheries, agriculture forecasting, disaster preparedness, insurance. The decision to dismantle it is ideological, not economic.

The five former directors of the National Weather Service — spanning Republican and Democratic administrations — published a joint open letter. The American Meteorological Society warned of "severe consequences." Former NOAA leaders used words like "irreparable," "catastrophic," and "myopic." These are not partisan voices. These are the people who built the systems now being destroyed.

What Happens Without the Data

Forecast models are only as good as the data feeding them. When the subsurface monitoring goes dark, the models will begin to drift from reality. El Niño peak timing predictions will carry wider error bands. Drought onset in Indonesia and the Philippines — already the most food-vulnerable region facing the worst El Niño in history — will be harder to anticipate with precision. The agricultural planning window shrinks. Governments that might have pre-positioned food reserves won't know when to act. The window for intervention narrows just as the need for intervention peaks.

For the 318 million people already in crisis hunger, and the hundreds of millions more who will cross that threshold as El Niño peaks, the difference between a 3-week and a 6-week warning of a failed monsoon or crop collapse is not an abstract data quality issue. It is the difference between organised response and catastrophe.

A Final Note

The previous post in this series documented 41 years of NOAA satellite data showing the Indonesian seas warming at three times the global average — the foundation of the scientific argument I have been making since 2004. That data exists because someone built and maintained the monitoring infrastructure over decades. The Coral Reef Watch time series. The CoralTemp satellite product. The regional virtual stations tracking bleaching heat stress from Maluku to the Philippines.

That infrastructure is now being systematically dismantled. The data we used in the previous post represents what we had. What we will have in five years — if this continues — is a fraction of it. The 41-year record will stop growing. The gaps will begin.

The Earth does not stop doing what it does because we stop watching. The magma moves. The ocean warms. The Kelvin waves propagate. The El Niños build and peak and collapse. All of it continues whether we are measuring it or not. The only thing that changes when we stop watching is our ability to understand it, prepare for it, and protect the people in its path.

Turning off the instruments in the middle of the storm is not a budget decision. It is a choice about whose lives matter enough to protect.

← Part I: Climate Science Revisited (2004) · Part II: The Furnace Below (June 8 2026) · Part III: Indonesia SST Deep Dive · Part IV: Going Blind (this post)

SOURCES: Science / AAAS (Aug 2025) · OPB / Oregon Public Broadcasting (Jun 3 2026) · Columbia Insight (May 2025) · CNN (Jun 3 2026) · Mongabay / Eco-Business (Jun 2026) · NPR (Apr 2025) · Inside Climate News (Dec 2025) · The Invading Sea (May 2026) · Michael Lowry / Substack (2026) · Scienceline (Sep 2025)
Former NWS Directors Open Letter · American Meteorological Society Statement · Ocean Conservancy Statement
Original framework: Thomas Lamb, Climate Science Revisited, March 2004
Research assistance: Claude, Anthropic · June 8, 2026

NOAA Coral Reef Watch · CoralTemp v3.1 · Maluku Sea, Indonesia · 130.4°E 5.6°S

Indonesia SST Deep Dive
41 Years of Data. One Pattern.

Daily 5km satellite sea surface temperature · Bleaching heat stress · 1985–2026 · Thomas Lamb

The NOAA Coral Reef Watch dataset for the Maluku Sea stretches back to January 1985 — 41 years of daily satellite sea surface temperature readings at 5km resolution. When you plot the full record, one pattern emerges that the mainstream climate narrative has consistently failed to explain: the seas directly above Indonesia's submarine volcanic arc are warming at three times the global ocean average. This is the data.

Bleaching Threshold (MMM)

29.13°C

Max Monthly Mean · Maluku Sea baseline

Warming Trend (summer)

+0.21°C

Per decade · 3× global ocean average

El Niño Probability 2026

98%

NOAA/NMME · persisting through early 2027

Current Bleaching Heat Stress Outlook — Maluku Station (NOAA CRW · June 2026)

NOW

Alert Level 4

4-WK OUTLOOK

Alert Level 4

8-WK OUTLOOK

Alert Level 4–5

12-WK OUTLOOK

Alert Level 5

Scale: Lv1 Watch · Lv2 Warning · Lv3 Alert 1 · Lv4 Alert 2 · Lv5 Alert 3 (NOAA expanded scale, 2024)

Annual Maximum SST Anomaly (°C above climatology) — Maluku Sea 1985–2026

+7.5°C +6°C +4.5°C +3°C +1.5°C 0°C

85

86

El Niño

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

Super El Niño

97

98

99

00

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

13

14

15

Super El Niño

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

PRE-PEAK ▲

26

Below +2°C (low stress)

+2–3°C (bleaching onset)

+3–5°C (mass bleaching)

Above +5°C (catastrophic)

2026 — pre-peak (peak Oct–Jan)

Major Bleaching Events — Maluku / Coral Triangle

Event	Peak Anomaly	BAA	Outcome
1987–88 El Niño	+5.4°C	Lv 3	First major regional bleaching
1997–98 Super El Niño	+6.8°C	Lv 4	Mass bleaching, Coral Triangle
2010 Marine Heatwave	+3.2°C	Lv 3	~60% mortality, Aceh / Sabang
2015–16 Super El Niño	+6.1°C	Lv 4	30–90% mortality E. Nusa Tenggara
2023–24 (4th Global)	+4.9°C	Lv 4	>80% reefs globally stressed
2026 ⚠ IN PROGRESS	4.5°C+ pre-peak	Lv 5 ▲	Peak impact Oct 2026–Jan 2027

Warming Rate by Sea Basin — Indonesian Waters

Halmahera Sea

+0.22°C/dec

Maluku Sea

+0.21°C/dec

Banda Sea

+0.20°C/dec

S. Makassar Str.

+0.19°C/dec

Java Sea

+0.13°C/dec

Timor Sea

+0.09°C/dec

Global ocean avg

+0.07°C/dec

The three fastest-warming basins (Halmahera, Maluku, Banda) sit directly above the densest concentration of submarine volcanic activity on Earth.

The seas directly above Indonesia's submarine volcanic arc are warming at three times the global ocean average. Atmospheric forcing is uniform. The differential is not.

The Thomas Lamb Framework — What The Data Shows

Finding 1 — Geographic Pattern

The three Indonesian sea basins with the highest warming rates — Maluku, Banda, Halmahera — directly overlie the densest concentration of submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal vents on Earth. This is not coincidence of location.

Finding 2 — Rate Differential

At +0.21°C per decade, these basins are warming at 3× the global ocean average of +0.07°C/decade. Uniform atmospheric greenhouse forcing cannot explain a differential concentrated precisely over a volcanic arc.

Finding 3 — 2026 Trajectory

We are entering the worst El Niño in recorded history with the highest pre-existing baseline thermal stress ever measured in this dataset. The peak impact window is October 2026 through January 2027. The Coral Triangle has never faced this combination.

In 2004 I published a framework arguing that Earth's internal magma system — expressed through submarine volcanic activity beneath the western Pacific — was an unaccounted driver of sea surface temperature in this region. The dataset above is 41 years of daily satellite evidence. The pattern it shows is not what purely atmospheric climate models would predict. The question I asked in 2004 remains unanswered by the scientific establishment. The ocean, however, is answering it on its own schedule.

Read the original 2004 framework →

DATA SOURCES: NOAA Coral Reef Watch CoralTemp v3.1 · Maluku Regional Virtual Station (130.43°E, 5.55°S) · Daily global 5km satellite SST 1985–2026
Bleaching threshold MMM = 29.13°C · Warming trend: Iskandar et al. (2020) Progress in Earth and Planetary Science
El Niño probability: NOAA/NMME June 2026 · Geothermal contribution: Liu et al. (2022)
Framework: Thomas Lamb, Climate Science Revisited, March 2004
Research assistance: Claude, Anthropic · June 8, 2026

Thomas Lamb  ·  June 8, 2026  ·  Research: Claude / Anthropic

How Earth's own magma system is driving the climate crisis — and why the convergence of a Super El Niño, a global fertilizer collapse, and an active Ring of Fire may be the most dangerous moment of our lifetime.

MAGNITUDE 7.8  ·  PHILIPPINES — TODAY
EL NIÑO ANOMALY FORECAST  ·  +3°C
PEOPLE IN CRISIS HUNGER  ·  318 MILLION

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Chapter I — The Warning Nobody Answered

A question asked in 2004. Still unanswered.

In March 2004, I published a paper arguing something the climate establishment found inconvenient: that the greatest concentration of volcanic and hydrothermal activity on Earth sits directly beneath the ocean region showing the most persistent sea surface temperature anomaly in the modern record. I asked whether that was coincidence. No serious answer came back.

Twenty-two years later, on June 8 2026, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off Mindanao in the southern Philippines, killing dozens, triggering a tsunami, and sending aftershocks through the same tectonic system I had been writing about. On the same day, a forecast map from NMME showed the western Pacific warm pool — the heat source for all of Asia's rainfall — draining eastward in what may become the strongest El Niño in recorded history. Tambora is stirring. Mount Lewotobi sent ash 18 kilometres into the sky last year. Ibu recorded 145 explosions in a single reporting period.

The question I asked in 2004 is no longer abstract. It has casualties.

"The greatest concentration of volcanic activity on Earth sits directly beneath the ocean region showing the most persistent temperature anomaly in the current global record. That is not a coincidence to be waved away."

What follows is the full argument — the science, the food crisis, the geopolitics — assembled from the evidence of 2026 and the framework laid down twenty-two years ago.

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Chapter II — The Source of the Heat

The ocean has a furnace underneath it.

The conventional explanation for warming seas focuses entirely on the top: solar radiation trapped by atmospheric greenhouse gases heats the ocean surface downward. This is real. It is also incomplete.

The western Pacific warm pool — the body of water centred on Indonesia and the Philippines, the warmest sustained patch of ocean on Earth — sits directly above the most tectonically violent convergence zone on the planet. Multiple subduction zones meet here. Hundreds of underwater volcanoes, many unmapped, punctuate the seafloor. Hydrothermal vent fields leak superheated mineral-rich water continuously. Magma chambers sit closer to the seafloor here than almost anywhere else on Earth.

Recent research has established that geothermal forcing accounts for nearly 20% of overall global ocean warming over the past two decades — a figure almost never mentioned in mainstream climate discourse. Seafloor geothermal heating warms bottom waters, decreases water column stability, and drives upward mixing. The heat doesn't pool on the seafloor. It rises.

The Heat Chain — Bottom Up

▸  Earth's mantle generates heat through radioactive decay and residual planetary formation energy

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▸  Magma activity intensifies along the Ring of Fire — subduction zones, hydrothermal vents, submarine volcanoes

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▸  Deep and bottom waters warm; column stability decreases; heat mixes upward

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▸  Western Pacific warm pool accumulates heat — from below and above simultaneously

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▸  Trade winds pile warm surface water further westward for years — the fuel tank fills

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▸  Warmer oceans outgas more CO₂ into atmosphere — warming amplifies

The Indo-Pacific warm pool has nearly doubled in size since 1900. Climate science attributes this to greenhouse gases. The attribution may be partially correct — and also partially inverted. Warmer oceans release more dissolved CO₂. If the ocean is warming partly from below, CO₂ rise is as much symptom as cause.

This does not absolve fossil fuel emissions. It means we are likely dealing with two compounding drivers, and we have been modelling only one of them.

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Chapter III — The Theft

Indonesia built the heat. El Niño steals it.

In April 2026, a pair of cyclones straddling the equator caused the trade winds to briefly reverse direction. This triggered a downwelling Kelvin wave — a pulse of subsurface energy moving eastward along the equator, carrying ocean temperatures reaching 7.5°C above average in the deep ocean. A freight train of heat, rolling from the western Pacific toward South America.

The Kelvin wave deepens the warm layer and shuts down cold upwelling off the South American coast. Sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific surge. The NMME forecast map for July 2026 shows the result in vivid orange-red: a blazing stripe of anomalous warmth crossing the entire equatorial Pacific, while the western Pacific — where Indonesia and the Philippines sit — shows near-normal or slightly cooled tones.

This is the mechanism. The western Pacific warm pool, fed for years by trade winds and geothermal heat from below, is drained eastward in months. The countries that generated the heat are left with cooler local seas, suppressed convection, reduced rainfall, drought, and wildfire risk.

Indonesia and the Philippines are funding the event that harms them most. The warm pool is their inheritance. El Niño is the repossession.

ECMWF, NOAA, and BOM models now align on a trajectory that could exceed +3°C anomaly — potentially surpassing the record-breaking El Niño of 1877–78. That event killed an estimated 50 million people, almost entirely through famine.

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Chapter IV — The Broken Table

318 million hungry. Before El Niño arrives.

On February 28 2026, maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz collapsed by nearly 97% following military escalation in the Middle East. Half the world's seaborne sulphur supply — a critical input for converting phosphate rock into usable fertilizer — passed through that strait. So did vast quantities of urea, ammonia, and LNG feedstock for nitrogen production.

Within weeks, urea prices jumped 46%. Anhydrous ammonia breached $900 per tonne. The CEO of Yara, the world's largest fertilizer company, warned that approximately 500,000 tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer was no longer being produced globally — and that the crisis could eliminate 10 billion meals per week if conditions persisted. Reduced nitrogen application can compress yields for intensive crops by as much as 50% within a single growing season.

Convergence — June 8, 2026

▸  318 million people in crisis-level hunger — before El Niño peaks

▸  Fertilizer prices up 80% year-on-year

▸  Rice output forecast to fall 20–50% across South and East Asia

▸  Wildfires have burned 150 million hectares globally — double the 2024 rate

▸  Two simultaneous confirmed famines: Gaza and Sudan

▸  Drought covers 61% of the US lower 48

▸  Magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Mindanao — today

These are not separate crises. They are the same system expressing itself through different channels simultaneously: tectonic, oceanic, atmospheric, geopolitical. The seafloor that generates the western Pacific's heat also produced today's 7.8 earthquake. The same trade routes broken by conflict also carry the fertilizer that was supposed to offset El Niño's effect on crop yields.

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Chapter V — The Geological Record

The Earth has caused extinctions before.

The Arctic was once lush with tropical vegetation. Palm trees, crocodiles, and dense forests existed at high latitudes during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago. CO₂ was high then too. There were no industrial humans.

The Permian extinction, 252 million years ago — the worst in Earth's history, eliminating 96% of marine species and 70% of land vertebrates — is now largely attributed to the Siberian Traps: a sustained volcanic event that flooded the atmosphere with CO₂ and sulphur dioxide from magma over tens of thousands of years. The end-Cretaceous event had volcanic precursors in the Deccan Traps before the asteroid arrived. The Paleocene-Eocene event was likely triggered by massive seafloor methane release driven by volcanic heating from below.

The pattern is consistent across deep time: magma intensifies, ocean heat rises, CO₂ outgasses, temperatures spike, ecosystems collapse faster than species can adapt.

What makes the present moment different is not the mechanism. It is the speed — and the population. Natural extinction-level volcanic episodes unfolded over millennia. Species migrated. Some adapted. Eight billion people cannot migrate at geological speed. Food systems that took centuries to build can collapse in a single growing season.

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Chapter VI — The Way Forward

You cannot turn down the Earth's thermostat. But you can prepare.

The hard implication of this framework is that carbon reduction policies — however beneficial for other reasons — will not stop what is already in motion. If Earth's internal systems are a primary driver being systematically excluded from our models, then every solution built on that incomplete model is also incomplete.

This does not mean we are helpless. It means the response must be honest about what we are actually facing.

Immediately: Emergency food stockpiling before El Niño peaks. Redirecting available fertilizer to highest-yield regions first. Activating drought-resistant seed programs in Indonesia and the Philippines before planting windows close. Rice, maize, and wheat varieties with deeper root systems and efficient water-use mechanisms exist now and can be deployed now.

Medium term: Bio-fertilizers harnessing beneficial plant-microbe interactions can reduce dependence on synthetic supply chains now broken by conflict. Indigenous food systems in the Maritime Continent — which fed these populations long before synthetic inputs existed — deserve serious reinvestment, not as nostalgia but as resilience infrastructure.

Structurally: Fertilizer must be treated as strategic national infrastructure. The Hormuz lesson must not be forgotten when the conflict ends. And climate science must integrate volcanology, deep oceanography, and atmospheric modelling into a single honest system — rather than the siloed disciplines that missed this convergence for twenty-two years.

The ocean has a furnace underneath it. We have been watching only the smoke. It is time to look at the fire.

The question I asked in 2004 was never answered. In 2026, the data is answering it for us — in earthquakes, in draining warm pools, in failed harvests, in famine. The answer is not comfortable. It never was. But an honest diagnosis is the only foundation on which a real response can be built.

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Afterword

On the record

This report was written on June 8 2026 — the day a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the Philippines, the day NMME published its July 2026 sea surface temperature anomaly forecast, and the day the FAO's warnings about Southeast Asian food insecurity came into sharpest focus. The convergence of events on a single day is not the argument. It is the illustration of an argument that has been available for twenty-two years.

The geological record does not care about our models. It continues regardless. The question is whether we choose to read it honestly, or wait for it to read itself to us.

THOMAS LAMB  ·  JUNE 8, 2026
RESEARCH ASSISTANCE: CLAUDE, ANTHROPIC
ORIGINAL FRAMEWORK: CLIMATE SCIENCE REVISITED, MARCH 2004