The Becket Potholes

The western side of Gobble Mountain in East Becket (MA) apparently offers some actual glacial potholes (as opposed to the fluvial ones  in Shelburne Falls). I wish one of these sources would contain a proper map that one could use to find them, but the pics are good!

• Glacial Potholes in the Gobble Highlands
• Becket Potholes Glacial Melt

The 2026/2027 'Super' El Nino

Fact: the current SSTs in the eastern tropical Pacific are about 3 deg C higher than normal and that's more than 1 deg C warmer than the powerful 1997 & 2015 El Ninos. So, what can we expect?

1. Droughts in southern Africa (e.g. Malawi, South Africa, etc.).
2. Dry conditions & wild fires in Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.
3. Dry conditions & wild fires in the Amazon region.
4. El Nino years, and especially the year after an El Nino year, are generally hotter on a global scale - so expect 2027 to be anothe record year.

More here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02939-x

This sea surface elevation comparison (1997 vs 2026 El Nino) from NASA is great: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/el-nino-then-and-now/

Sealevel Rise & Lower

This one is actually pretty cool: https://slidingshores.com/

Now, the amount of rise & lower is getting pretty crazy & is way more than anything that could happen on Earth, but a) it's fun and b) this is the only 'animation' that I know of where you can actually lower sealevel to demonstrate conditions say during the LGM.

For a more 'realistic' sea level rise visualization: consider the Coastal Risk Finder.

AI & UHI

We all know the connection between AI, energy use, and global warming. But there is another angle: local heating, in-essence a version of the well-understood UHI. More here:

• AI Data Centers Release Heat, Posing New Problems for Cities
• Sailor et al. (2026): Data Center Waste Heat as an Emerging Urban Thermal Hazard: First Field Measurements of Neighborhood-Scale Air Temperature Impacts 

The Map Animator

This is awesome: https://mapanimator.baldinger.se/

Draw your route or drop in a GPX file, add signs and a camera move, and download it as an MP4 video, up to 4K, ready for your editor.

How To Sound Smart When Talking About Charts

How To Sound Smart When Talking About Charts is a fun little compilation of quotes with comments and context.

El Nino Impacts

Very cool interactive visual from The Climate Brink: https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#impacts