3 Coming Shocks

Meet the gang of hungry wolves coming to visit you in 2026/2027 - go ahead, shake them by the paw

Rather than just imply connections between crises, at times in this project I like to specifically map areas of interaction out and at least partially quantify what we’ll be seeing as the storm hits. Call this the specific events versus the general trend lines - and if our theory is accurate and prescriptive we should be able to do both.

Lots of people think things will ‘just get worse.’ We’re going to say just how, why and when. And here’s where it’ll really hit : I’ve got some doozies for you coming in just the next 18 months. Big events, that would read in a history book, all hitting with a year or two.

Let’s see them.

Another >.25C El Nino ‘ratchet’

Current forecasts for 2026 suggest a possible ENSO positive period appearing across ensembles in June at the earliest (https://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/). That’s a long way out and a lot can change, but there’s some additional events we can consider when trying to assess its appearance. Let me start with an assertion though: I think world conditions are setting the Pacific up for another 2015 style El Nino Event (ie., strong and long) that will ratchet up Earth’s general SA (surface anomaly) worse than 2023.

Here’s some observations:

In 2025 we’ve had record North Pacific ocean temps outside of season, and for record amounts of time, with a strong atmospheric ridge over the northern Pacific (the return of the RRR - really resilient ridge).

Panama up-welling failed this year suggesting further equatorial instabilities, especially ‘unseen/subsurface’ ones.

The winter of 2025 (now) is a double dip La Nina, and yet we’ve only just had general ocean temperatures (temporarily) dip to pre 2023 heat anomalies.

We now have a large maritime continent westerly wind event, eastern Indian Ocean to western Pacific - generally seen as a pre-sign of El Nino.

Finally despite record PDO persisting + Double dip La Nina + an only ‘moderate’ 2023 El Nino, 2024/2025 are still in the 1st and 3rd hottest years on record for air temps, with 1st and 3rd hottest oceans.

What does this all mean? I do think the stage is set a coming El Nino in 2026 yes, but even if shouldn’t appear until 2027 (or hell even 2028), I think the far more important conclusion is that whenever the next such event DOES arrive, conditions now are telling us it’s going to be a BIG one. Very Big Even.

Hansen is informative here (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494, and https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2025/CloudFeedback.13May2025.pdf), with his core argument being that SO2 cooling was misassessed, he suggests a general +1w/m2 will result from their 2020 reduction, with the heat of 2023 being primarily a result of this additional unmasking + a ‘mid’ El Nino. Unfortunately for us all, in his estimation however only about 1/2 (or .5w/m2) of this total possible forcing has reached the entire system so far, and so he expects the next El Nino year to add ANOTHER similar jump. That means another 2023, which was about a .25C PERMANENT increase to ocean temps. In this instance it’s not that El Nino is specifically adding the heat, it’s that when measuring from one peak to another, we’ll see the full forcing of heat most apparent.

Given that the North Pacific readings from CERES have shown a jump of >2w/m2 for just that region since 2020, exactly as Hansen has predicted given the SO2 ship fuel ban, I’m definitely of mind to agree with him that total forcing from aerosols might really be this large. Independent measurements of general reflectivity on earth suggest a >.5% reduction in albedo since 2023, which would fit such rises in EEI. However I’m also of the opinion that Hansen has left some other forcings OUT. Things I don’t see accounting for:

Soil feedbacks are larger than IPCC assessments. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59013-9)

There are historical ECS measurements even higher than his. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47676-9)

AMOC is likely already down >15% (via SV measurement) now, with other ocean currents especially slowed as well. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02403-0 + https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad1d3b)

Antarctica sea ice has dropped by the size of Greenland since 2015, with 2025 having the lowest record yet for total ice and this is (at least partially) because of SMOC changes. (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2500440122)

Ross sea seeps, ESAS, Amazon Fan, Barents Sea seeps, and Svalbard all have new thermogenic methane sources reaching the atmosphere, with a 2 to 10 year lag in detection in place.

The worst factor of all however is a drop in ocean heat inertia, not just via stratification but via Rossby wave interference/chaos and BMHWs persisting and spreading unevenly. Deepening of the mixed layer (10% or more worldwide) + weakened ocean damping (due to upper ocean stratification) + reduced oceanic forcing variance (historical) = heat pooling in the surface and blowing up our old mixing regime. (https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01742-8 and https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02245-w)

Some math for this below (and outright theft of Lee, Song, et al’s excellent formula) :

If we take ENSO as a finite pulse of forcing of duration D, acting on a mixed layer with e-folding τ

ΔTmax​∝τ(1−e−D/τ)

for ENSO forcing length (D ≈ 4–10 months) and pre-shift τ for SST, doubling τ gives:

τ old = 45-90d > τ new = 90 - 180d

D = 120-300d

Scale of 1.32 - 1.76 or so over baseline results. This means previous El Ninos may need to be replaced with longer and hotter ones, and that even an expected spike MIGHT be blown up with .25c becoming somewhere between .33 to .44C. I’m fairly certain this sort of ocean amplification is NOT in Hansen’s math, but it’s suggestive that even his .5w/m2 might ‘unmask’ larger than he thought, and larger than 2023, given more heat has built up since then and the ocean currents visibly shifting.

And just a few lesser formalized points, El Ninos that follow double dip La Ninas often appear to be larger, and 2023’s El Nino wasn’t even of more than moderate intensity, AND followed a generally cooling Tonga blast, meaning our next El Nino has a few more dice rolled in its favor.

So Hansen says .25C likely again with the next El Nino, while I say it’ll be >.25C. But so what?

Let’s keep in mind that 2023 appears to have caused a step up in climate disasters worldwide. Some examples:

⦁ First half of 2025 was the most expensive for climate disasters in the US, costing at least $101 billion in six months.

⦁ Britain has had two record low harvests in a row, 2024 and 2025. European fruit growers have issued repeated warnings of >50% fruit losses in multiple nations.

⦁ Spain has endured repeated extreme flooding events, including Valencia storms of 2024.

⦁ Atlantic MDR has been at records each of 23-25, leading to an expansion of hurricane season by 6 to 10 weeks, with cat 5 showing up by earlier and later than previous records. Hurricane Melissa this year was the fastest confirmed hurricane wind speeds.

⦁ 3 typhoons of unusual size have all hit Mozambique/Malawi inside of 2 years.

⦁ Droughts have set in larger areas, and expanded in depth. (See Iran below)

⦁ Panama up welling has failed for the first time, and coral reefs worldwide have experience a >80% bleaching with many regional populations now extinct.

⦁ 2020 had IPC hunger of 4/5 at 2 million or so. 2024 had IPC hunger at 20 million+ (see below), with crop failures throughout the global South.

⦁ 23 and 25 were the worst years for Canadian fires by >3x.

⦁ World fishery collapses have happened each repeatedly in the north Pacific and north Atlantic, in seasonal snow crabs, herring, cod all.

⦁ 24 is 1.55C global mean SA. We reached 3 year average of 1.5C in late 2025.

If the heat goes up again of anything like .25C, expect this sort of increase AGAIN BUT WORSE.

World food aid cuts and 50 million+ or more in IPC 4/5

The largest hunger crisis ever recorded in the modern world is currently underway, and by 2026/27 it will have expanded by hundreds of millions. I can say this right now and it’s not hyperbole or even speculative, the WFP agrees (https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-prioritize-feeding-110-million-hungriest-2026-global-hunger-deepens-amidst-uncertain & https://www.wfp.org/news/new-wfp-analysis-shows-every-1-cut-food-assistance-pushes-400000-people-emergency-hunger). What I contend that the WFP hasn’t considered, is that their deteriorating picture is only the floor of what’s really about to happen.

It’s not simply the weather causing hunger, though let’s start there.

We all know (or should) that Drought + Floods are effecting crops worldwide, with Cocoa/Coffee/Citrus all under stress . While major crops are generally still stable in worldwide aggregate, individual breadbaskets are being hit harder and more frequently meaning we require records in other places to compensate. And unfortunately in 2024 for the first time each major breadbasket of USA, India, Ukraine/Russia, China and Brazil all experienced drought at one point or another in the same year.

But if international systems generally allow local chaos to be smoothed over, what happens when there are flaws in international systems?

A first order problem here then is an expansion of territory under conflict of 65% from 2021 to 2024 (https://acleddata.com/media-citation/worlds-conflict-zones-increased-two-thirds-past-three-years-report-reveals-guardian). The number of active wars is surging, and the number of potential conflicts also rising. The first exchange of direct fire between two nuclear powers (India and Pakistan) occurred in 24/25, and Iran and Israel directly attacked one after 50+ years of threatened but never 1-on-1 aggression. Gaza was (and is) intentionally starved, the Sudan conflict expanded to more rounds of direct cleansing, Thailand/Cambodia, Myanmar/Rohine, Mali/Itself, all are new and expanding. And the nations at peace aren’t helping. USAID was cut >80% in 2025, with France, the UK, Germany, Canada and much of Europe following suit despite 2024 ending with record hunger. And rather than a planned phase out, contracts were cut immediately and aid agencies left without recourse. With no new surges of food aid appearing so far, the general expectation is that any individual left suddenly without may fall one to two further brackets.

So if we assume a base state of ~280–300 M in IPC3+, ~35–40 M in IPC4+, ~1–2 M in IPC5 as of 2024–25 (thus before food aid cuts), we might within 6 months+ expect:

300M * 1/3 (rough percentage of food aid cuts) = 100M of IPC3 now in 4/5

Which means means a baseline of 136 to 142M in extreme IPC ranges 4/5 by late 2025/early 2026.

We should recognize some further non-WFP increases to these sorts of numbers as well. New wars tend to mean more hunger yes, but there’s also SNAP disruptions in the US, de-funding of public institutions throughout Europe, Argentina, USA, Canada (due to debt concerns) and the record low GDP growth of the 2020s (2.3% or less worldwide). Inequality continues to grow while housing/rent costs are up almost everywhere except China. Ottawa has public food programs overwhelmed, and Syndey now has homeless camps, and any additional shocks to trade/wars/tariffs etc will only grow these numbers. Any war with Venezuela, any swelling of Eritrea/Ethiopia and all these numbers here would be the baseline for further growth.

But just wait, it gets even worse - see interaction space below.

And yet still let’s reflect for a moment - tracked hunger worldwide has doubled in 6 years per the WFP. We’ve seen record refugees in this amount of time, and governments worldwide have had to contend with more immigration, more concern over immigration, and defense budgets that have begun to swell. And public debts that are at records highs all over. Which means in the future there will be less money to go to solve hunger, and more towards the tools that cause it. Whatever you think of immigration, populism, border controls, public spending and public health, all of them are influenced by hunger. And hunger isn’t just bad now; as the aid cuts and weather continue to spread through 2026, all of these problems will have some worsening baked in. This is our shock in slow motion but make no mistake, it IS a shock that everyone is going to have to contend with.

The Fall of Iran

Iran is going to fall in some great fashion (and others in the Middle East with it) due to drought & political/economic instability, and then a refugee crisis many times larger than Syria’s will begin. Whether these refugees can (mostly) be kept internal to Iran or not is a big question, but what isn’t is the status of Iran as a large regional power and stability node. If Iran falls in some great way, then whatever your opinion’s about the regime it’s still important to note how many millions of lives currently rely on the cities of Tehran and Mashad.

November of 2025 say a 98% reduction in snowfall from 2024 in Tehran’s region from history. November is typically the second wettest and snowiest month for central Iran and as of 11/26/25, Tehran has received NO appreciable precipitation, with the President publicly speaking of the need to now move the Capital, after large scale water cuts and power cuts have failed to contain the situation. Unfortunately for Iran, the situation in it’s next biggest city of Mashhad is no better, and its taps are dry too.

This means somewhere on the order of 10 to 16 million in Tehran, and 4 million in Mashhad are now facing no water, or something close to it. And since it’s not just these cities but the whole of the central parts of the nation, it’s likely something like 30 to 40 million people MINIMUM are being exposed to basic resource disruptions.

But this alone isn’t the real shock that’s coming. No this is already here, the REAL shock is the next stage:

IF we assume some water is going to fall over the next few winter months, the baseline dryness of the last few years + this already greatly stunted winter period nonetheless suggests that even if Iran’s central cities somehow limp through this season, by early next summer the problem will immediately start up again. And if it took until end of Nov to run out of water this year, next year it could start in July or August. Which means a SEASON without water, or maybe more than one.

Syria had a population of 15 to 20 million.

Ukraine had a population of 44 million.

Iran has 85 to 90 million.

Estimating the size of potential refugee exodus from something like cities without water is very hard, but likely could be several times larger than either exodus above (est. of 4 million for Syria, & same for Ukraine). Compounding the issue is that no nearby neighbor of Iran’s has great relations with Iran, with Turkey and Afghanistan both opposed to Iran, and with semi-militarized borders. And add a recent conflict with Israel that is ‘smoldering’ at best.

So what happens? Here’s the shock - no one knows. A city of Tehran’s size has never ‘run out of water,’ let alone an entire central region of a major nation. But by sometime summer 2026 at the latest this will be the reality (without an unexpected water event) there!

Given Iran’s 2025 YOY inflation was already 49%, a large scale abandoning of the capital would likely lead to only further economic shocks for a regime so far unable (or unwilling) to respond. This means individuals will be increasingly left to fend for themselves, and governance would fray further. It’s hard to see what could happen here other than mass deaths, mass migration, or violent regime change, or all three. Without water however it is very likely that a large amount of previous stable people become refugees, or classed in IPC 4/5 levels of ‘without.’

But wait, there is more. Because it’s not just Iran under drought, Iraq, parts of Pakistan & Afghanistan, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, all are experiencing this prolonged period of water scarcity that has seemed to accelerate recently. And while Iran has the most concentrated population, a region suffering the same consequences means more competition for resources. Less capacity to share with a country already isolated.

Iran’s banking system was generally seen as over-extended and over-leveraged before calls to move a national capital - and that’s ignoring what happens to the citizenry. Millions of people will have to do something to continue, muddling through as best they can or else moving en masse. That’s in the near future.

Interaction Space

If we assume the general SA of 2022 was 1.1C, and 2024 was 1.55C, we have a .44C rise in 4 years, with the majority of it appearing with the 2023 El Nino. If we also assume the next El Nino is at least the same size as 2023, we may also have to accept the potential for another .44C or > rise in air temps. How certain am I of this? It’s at least my central case, and it comes from a significant admission - many scientists would be surprised to see a rise of .25C in the oceans and ONLY see a .4C rise in the air. Most heat transfer equations would assume a lot more heat in the air from such a large water rise.

Now let’s consider 80% of the world’s hungry live in ‘disaster prone’ nations. Weather is generally believed to be the single largest driver for hunger, and so if we assume that even 50% of the world’s hunger is influenced by weather (our floor then), what might happen when a new heat ratchet interacts with the already rising hunger we identified?

If we start with 2025/2026 at 136M in IPC 4/5, let’s now assume a new El Nino starts in late 26. The effects on fires and droughts and floods were nearly immediate in 23, but let’s assume 27 is ‘when the pain starts.’ What drove hunger in 21 to end of 24? Pandemic? Ukraine war? Inflation in general? All did of course, so what do we see over the next period? We are going to need some sort of equation clearly, and one that can handle the nonlinear, but will the result be up or down? What do you think?

What if we try something like

H(t) = (Hs x Climate(t) x Aid(t) x Governance(t)) + Iran(t)

Hs = 2025 figure of 136M (or change if you disagree)

Climate = 1 + .5 x (ΔT/.5C) - I think I’ll put ΔT = 1, so our new weather factor is 2x as bad as the .5 rise before it

Aid = any changes to aid you think are coming, I’d probably keep subtracting here

Governance = any changes to governance

Iran = the size of Iran we’d have to just add as a lump to this, given their situation is about to be clearly nonlinear. A simple plug would give us:

H(2027) = 136M x 2 x 1 x 1 + 20M

292M for IPC 4/5. What do you think?

What if we take WFP assertion of 312M in IPC3 in 2026? Where are they in 2027?

H(2027) = 312M x 1.5 x 1.2 x 1 + 10M (we’ll assume a light hit on Iran here)

571M in IPC3+

Feel free to play around with that equation. The point of it is simply this: whatever you get out likely is larger than what you put in, and that’s because our shocks are interacting. Hell, if you don’t like that equation and want to assume linear growth (a rougher calculation of 22% increase in hunger per year between 21 and 24) we might see 136M * 1.22^3 = 247M IPC 4/5 by 2027. But that should probably be a FLOOR given that each .5C is worse than the one before it and that we have no idea how bad things will get for the people of Iran.

Consequences of all this? We’ve never seen hunger at these rates in a modern world, and it’s hard to assume what immediately happens when other crises are added to it. We do know that 2024 had record (or near record) incumbency losses, leading to the USAID cuts of 2025. But 2025 also had global warming cuts - where many nations stepped back from pledges/net zero/opened up drilling etc. The US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand all retreated in some fashion or another from climate commitments. Anti-immigration efforts became front and center worldwide, with ICE receiving a 17x increase in funding, and nations like Germany and Japan making efforts to deport individuals. Afghanistan’s population rose 10% in 24/25, as Pakistan and Iran expelled millions of Afghanis. And all of this was BEFORE any of our 3 new unraveling shocks got fully going.

So what else is going to result here?

Well all 3 are likely drivers of refugees, and more refugees will increase anti-immigration results in elections, decrease climate interventions (there will be less money), and continue (or worsen) the decrease in foreign aid. Each of our 3 shocks reinforces the others then?

These shocks all will also contribute to war. Pakistan has once again enshrined a military leader, and the Pakistan/Indian conflict has literally been identified as a regional spillover sparked by water concerns. With Iranian refugees or at least instability increasing behind Pakistan, drought and flood increasing, and hunger surging in Afghanistan and itself, what will this do to conflict calculus?

Is there a relationship between heat/refugees/hunger and war that we can calculate? Will the area of expansion be greater than 65% by 2 to 3x as well?

And keep mind that even if El Nino shows up a bit later, 2028 say, not all of the ‘preconditioning’ we’ve seen is likely to vanish. And that the heat would still arrive on large amounts of hungry/drought ridden people. We’d still have interactions, just drawn out longer.

And that is (if anything) the whole point of this document. To lay out that these 3 shocks you see aren’t just possibly time-gated, they are in fact expected. They are trend lines continuing from right now, and together they represent a shifting down of the general baseline of planet Earth. Yes we might get a lesser El Nino, or yes there might be a restart of foreign aid to try and assuage SOME amount of the hunger. Such events are what we might call ‘positive black swan events’, and they absolutely could change some of this trajectory.

But have you noticed that none of THESE events require anything new to happen? The baseline is shifted, and while positive black swans might occur, so might NEW bad black swans.

I haven’t even mentioned things like China’s 2027 Taiwan plans (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/26/taiwan-president-lai-china-japan-xi-trump-defense.html), or any worldwide economic shocks.

What you see here is just what I expect to have manifested before the end of 2027, and possibly much much sooner.

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And BTW I’ve updated the tracker. We’re at 37% trending TRUE so far.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-5AKjpJO4kTZRGD83FBxXRQLtgjNhnRXyFfsFyo4_SA/edit?gid=1904738056#gid=1904738056