King Tides & El Nino!

The Local Wikipedia

This is fun: Local Wikipedia is Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you! Try it out @ https://edjefferson.com/localwiki/.

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.