Peter du Toit

The Garden Route District of the Western Cape enters summer with all its dams bar 2 at 100% capacity. We couldn’t hope for a better scenario as we face the looming El Niño impacts. Further west ie the Overberg, Cape Town etc. things are not looking the same.

Relative Nino3 El Nino index over +4C (four degrees). Never seen that in my professional lifetime. Unbelievable... but also not. Latest BoM data: www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso...

"This is some of the strongest evidence so far that the #AMOC has weakened over the last 40 years.”

I spend my days helping people develop resilience plans to try and avoid permanent loss. The level of complacency caused by climate impacts not materialising immediately is scary. This El Niño is going to be a case study of people being caught completely off guard by its delayed impacts.

Quick summary of almost 3 months of extreme Indonesia fire emissions & haze with #CopernicusAtmosphere Fire Emissions Watch apps.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/fire-emissio.... S Sumatra/Central Kalimantan/Papua all show persistent high values since August. @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social @ecmwf.int

Historic comeback in Brazil! And perhaps, more importantly, the emergence of a new playbook for beating the far right: Challenge social media algorithms in the courts, reclaim the flag, call out extractivist fascism and fill the streets and the networks.

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came from behind to win Brazil’s runoff election, halting a right-wing wave sweeping Latin America and defying predictions that the 80-year-old political veteran had finally reached the end of his extraordinary career. bloom.bg/4BsvV24 📷: Maira Erlich/Bloomberg

Brexit has been catastrophic. It's time to rejoin the EU.

👋🏻 @wflamb.bsky.social Quick question do you perhaps have an ETA for the 2026 version of this lambwf.github.io/UNEP-Gap-Rep... This is *super* useful so am saying thanks in advance! 🙏🏻

Current policies put the world on course for up to 2.8°C of warming this century. That means greater risk from extreme heat, floods & wildfires. But this future isn’t inevitable. Fast emissions cuts can limit warming and reduce risks to people and nature: https://ow.ly/KjOW51002IV #EmissionsGap

ICYMI “Today, we are issuing a joint call for urgent and coordinated anticipatory action.” webtv.un.org/en/asset/k15...

We are absolutely not ready for a world beyond 1.5°C Our cities and towns are not built for this. Olivia, Valencia: www.reuters.com/business/env...

What do @andyburnham.bsky.social, @miattafahnbulleh.bsky.social and the UK Labour government do? That's right, give the go ahead for more greenhouse gases and signal to the global oil & gas industry that "Hey, it's OK to drill for more, because we are". Jackdaw is a knife in the back 🗡️

Ministers approving new oil and gas licences as the world passes 1.5C are pouring petrol on a burning building. They’re arsonists.

This is not about "climate campaigners" and framing it this way is totally ridiculous This is a blow to the planet and us all

The tide gauge at Virginia Key (Miami) already exceeded the minor flood threshold today. We're still a week away from the peak water levels... this is going to get very bad.

Supersized heat waves used to be rare. No longer. A Reuters data-driven examination of global temperatures reveals the emergence of what we call heat storms. They now swarm the planet, upending life around the world. reut.rs/4zBUXtM

Record heat and a rising demand for electricity are closing in on US families trying to keep the lights on and the AC running States like Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, Oklahoma restrict shut-offs during the most dangerous heat, so disconnections tend to peak in October www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/u...

Climate economics today is analogous to "carrying out a risk assessment of the impact of the Titanic hitting an iceberg but excluding from the model the possibility that the ship could sink, the shortage of lifeboats, and death from drowning or hypothermia.” By @doctorvive.bsky.social

Updated estimates of 2026 + 2027 expectations - new and improved graphic! data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/gmsta/

ICYMI

Introducing AIFS-COMPO, a new data-driven forecasting system for global atmospheric composition up to 10 days ahead. Adapting ECMWF’s AIFS to aerosols and reactive gases, AIFS-COMPO is trained on data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. ➡️ www.ecmwf.int/en/about/med...

1,000 Individual Days over 1.5°C of Global Warming! #ClimateChange #GlobalBoiling Disclaimer: Trends are solid, but exact numbers are sensitive to assumptions.

Africa Energy Week - Cape Town 12-16 October “We went through this year’s agenda.” “Gas” appears 82 times “Oil”, 64 “Renewable” scrapes in at 15 “Solar” gets two mentions and “Wind” gets zero Also no mention of the Paris Agreement or net-zero targets. This as climate chaos spreads across Africa

Attention turns to some countries in Africa, in this case Somalia, as the El Niño impacts arrive. “28% of the analysed population are likely to face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above) between October and December 2026.” Data: www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-webs...

Indonesia fire emissions up to 15 October shows 2026 staying close to previous El Niño years of 2019 & 2006 but a little behind 2015. #CopernicusAtmosphere GFASv1.2 data available via Fire Emissions Watch apps.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/fire-emissio... @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social @ecmwf.int

The Standardised Precipitation Index. (SPI-3) for the Western Cape in South Africa as the El Niño summer approaches. "No-regret preparedness" is honestly a non-negotiable!