Currently in San Francisco — June 27, 2023: Cloudy, breezy day with some sun later on

The weather, currently.

In a case where national news hits home, Paul Singer – the billionaire who financed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s trip to Alaska in 2008 (private jet, bougie hotel, the works!) – is tied to Eureka resident and NIMBY-ist, Rob Arkley (who owned the fishing lodge Alito stayed at). Specifically, he opposes building affordable housing on top of municipal parking lots and does not support government interventions to help unhoused people or efforts to repatriate lands to Native communities. He is so reviled that a Hoopa Valley Tribe rapper, Cali Los Mikoyo, even released a track maligning Arkley’s antics in 2017.

—Priya Shukla

What you can do, currently.

Currently is entirely member funded, and right now we need your support!

Our annual summer membership drive is underway — with a goal to double our membership base over the next six weeks which will guarantee this service can continue throughout this year’s hurricane season. We’ll need 739 new members by July 31 to make this goal happen.

If these emails mean something important to you — and more importantly, if the idea of being part of a community that’s building a weather service for the climate emergency means something important to you — please chip in just $5 a month to continue making this service possible.

Thank you!!

What you need to know, currently.

El Niño, the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, is back — and it’s getting worse fast.

New data out Monday shows that El Niño has now officially moved into “moderate” territory — with tropical Pacific water temperatures already up to 1.0°C higher than normal. That’s expected to keep growing quickly over the next few months, with a worst-case estimate from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology showing a peak warming of 3.2°C by November — which would be the strongest El Niño ever measured, by far. Even an average of global predictions now show a peak warming of 2.2°C — meaning that only the El Niños that began in 1982, 1997, and 2015 would be stronger.

The implications of an El Niño this strong are difficult to underestimate. In 2015-16, more than 60 million people worldwide experienced hunger due to drought made worse by the El Niño. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia suffered its worst coral bleaching event in history, with about 30% of the reef losing most of its corals. Pacific Islanders faced a string of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded.

Initial research shows that this year’s El Niño could cost the struggling global economy nearly $3 trillion.

—Eric Holthaus