La Niña has arrived. Here’s what that means

illuminem summarizes for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece on The Washington Post or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: La Niña, the planet-cooling climate phenomenon, has returned, NOAA announced
• Despite its cooling effect, 2025 is still projected to rank among the hottest years ever recorded, reflecting how much global temperatures have risen

🔭 The context: La Niña involves cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific, influencing global weather patterns
• It typically brings warm, dry winters to the U.S. South and wet, snowy conditions to the northern regions
This episode is weaker, unusually late in forming, and forecasted to be short-lived, ending by spring 2025

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: While La Niña offers brief cooling, the persistent heat caused by human-driven emissions overshadows its effects
• This underscores the urgency to address climate change as extreme weather events and rising global temperatures continue to intensify

⏭️ What's next: Global temperatures may dip slightly below the critical 1.5°C warming threshold through August 2025, but experts warn the reprieve is temporary
• Without reducing carbon emissions, record-breaking heat, storms, and floods will worsen

💬 One quote: “We’ll keep on seeing this breaking of records and climate impacts worsening as long as we continue to emit carbon dioxide.” — Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

📈 One stat: 2025 is likely to be cooler than 2023 and 2024 but hotter than every other year on record

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