by Daniel Brouse
Introduction: What Is Tipping Point Season?
The first tipping point season was 2023–2024, when global temperatures exceeded +1.5°C for an extended period. During that season, nine tipping points became observable:
- Greenland Ice Sheet Collapse
- West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse
- Labrador–Irminger Seas/SPG Convection Collapse
- East Antarctic Subglacial Basins Collapse
- Arctic Winter Sea Ice Collapse
- East Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse
- Amazon Rainforest Dieback
- Boreal Permafrost Collapse
- Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) Collapse
This phenomenon occurred simultaneously with El Niño. ENSO is not a cause of climate change; rather, it is a manifestation of the climate system’s accumulated energy. Most of that accumulated climate energy is stored in the oceans. Every several years, much of this heat is brought toward the surface in an oscillating pattern.
Over the last 30 years, El Niño events have continued to occur at their historical frequency of roughly every 2 to 7 years, but their intensity has dramatically increased. A recent August 2026 study by the University of Michigan revealed that El Niño events have become nearly 40% stronger over the last few decades compared with the pre-industrial era.
The last 30 years have borne witness to three of the most powerful “Super El Niño” events in recorded history, alongside an exceptionally strong event currently unfolding in 2026. The extreme heat released by this “supersized” El Niño is expected to temporarily push the entire planet above the 1.5°C global warming limit by late 2026 and into 2027.
A Planetary Feedback Network
This tipping point season is pushing the climate system even further, with traditionally non-connected tipping points and feedbacks beginning to couple with one another. One example is the coupling of a Pacific El Niño and an Atlantic Niña.
Usually, the Pacific and Atlantic pretty much “do their own thing.” But this year is different. The climate system has been supercharged with energy, and that energy is manifesting in some strange and surprisingly interconnected ways. The unusual co-occurrence of a Pacific El Niño and an Atlantic Niña illustrates how strongly connected Earth’s climate system is. Although the Pacific and Atlantic are separate ocean basins, the atmosphere links them through planetary-scale circulation patterns.
The deeper significance is the connection itself.
A thermal anomaly in the Pacific can reorganize tropical convection. That atmospheric reorganization can propagate through the global circulation system, altering pressure and winds over the Atlantic. Those winds can change ocean upwelling and sea-surface temperatures. The resulting ocean anomaly can then modify atmospheric moisture, convection, and storm development.
The signal can extend even farther through the North Atlantic jet stream and atmospheric wave patterns, influencing weather regimes across Europe and the United Kingdom.
This is not a single atmospheric current traveling around the planet. It is a coupled network of atmospheric and oceanic responses operating across different spatial and temporal scales.
What begins as: PACIFIC WARMING
became: ATMOSPHERIC REROUTING
then: ATLANTIC COOLING
and ultimately:
REGIONAL WEATHER + HYDROCLIMATIC CONSEQUENCES
The climate system is therefore not a collection of isolated ocean basins and weather systems. Energy moves through the connections. The atmosphere carries the signal. The oceans respond. Feedbacks propagate. One planet. One interconnected climate system.
This tipping point season makes observable, for the first time in history, the coupling, interaction, and amplification of feedbacks—and their collective pushing of tipping points into their second derivation.
