When El Niño exacerbates global warming: Record heat, record flooding, record wildfires
Traffic warden Rai Rogers mans his street corner during an 8-hour shift under the hot sun in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 12, 2023, where temperatures reached 106 degrees amid an ongoing heatwave. More than 50 million Americans are set to bake under dangerously high temperatures this week, from California to Texas to Florida, as a heat wave builds across the southern United States.
Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images
If you feel like record-level extreme weather events are happening with alarming frequency, you’re not alone. Scientists say it’s not your imagination.
“The number of simultaneous weather extremes we’re seeing right now in the Northern Hemisphere seems to exceed anything at least in my memory,” Michael Mann, professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania, told CNBC.
Globally, June was the hottest June in the 174-year records kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency said on Thursday. It was the 47th consecutive June and the 532nd consecutive month in which average temperatures were above the average for the 20th century.
The amount of sea ice measured in June was the lowest global June sea ice on record, due primarily to record-low sea ice levels in the Antarctic, also according to NOAA.
There were nine tropical cyclones in June, defined as storms with wind speeds over 74 miles per hour, and the global accumulated cyclone energy, a measure of the collective duration and strength of tropical storms, was almost twice its average value for 1991–2020 in June, NOAA said.
As of Friday morning, 93 million people in the United States are under excessive heat warnings and heat advisories, the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center, according to a bulletin published Friday morning. “A searing heat wave is set to engulf much of the West Coast, the Great Basin, and the Southwest,” the National Weather Service said.
A person receives medical attention after collapsing in a convenience store on July 13, 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona. EMT was called after the person said they experienced hot flashes, dizziness, fatigue and chest pain. Record-breaking temperatures continue soaring as prolonged heatwaves sweep across the Southwest.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Flooding in downtown Montpelier, Vermont on Tuesday, July 11, 2023. Vermont has been under a State of Emergency since Sunday evening as heavy rains continued through Tuesday morning causing flooding across the state.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
On June 27, Canada surpassed the record set in 1989 for total area burned in one season when it reached 7.6 million hectares, or 18.8 million acres. And the total has since increased to 9.3 million hectares, or 23 million acres, which is being driven by record-breaking high temperatures, turning the vegetation into kindling for wildfires to race through.
Those record Canada wildfires have blanketed parts of the United States in smoke, causing some of the worst quality in the world at various points.
A view of the city as smoke from wildfires in Canada shrouds sky on June 30, 2023 in New York City, United States. Canadian wildfires smoke creating a dangerous haze as the air quality index reaches 160 in New York City. People warned to avoid outdoor physical activities and for those who spend time outdoors recommended to use well-fitting face masks when air quality is unhealthy.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
In all of 2022, there were 18 separate billion dollar weather and climate disaster events according to data from NOAA, including tornado outbreaks, high wind, hailstorms, tropical cyclones, flooding, drought, heatwaves and wildfires. So far, there have been 12 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2023, according to NOAA.
“This year will almost certainly break records for the number of extreme weather events,” Paul Ullrich, professor of regional and global climate modeling at University of California at Davis, told CNBC.
Global warming is making extreme weather events more severe, scientists said.
“Our own research shows that the observed trend toward more frequent persistent summer weather extremes — heat waves, floods, — is being driven by human-caused warming,” Mann told CNBC.
Ullrich agrees. “Increases in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, floods and wildfires can be directly attributable to climate change,” Ullrich told CNBC.
Wildfire burns above the Fraser River Valley near Lytton, British Columbia, Canada, on Friday, July 2, 2021. A protracted heat wave continues to fuel scores of wildfires in Canada’s western provinces, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling an emergency meeting of a cabinet crisis group to address the matter.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“Through the emission of greenhouse gases, we have been trapping more heat near the surface, leading to increases in temperature, more moisture in the air, and a drier land surface,” Ullrich said. “Scientists are extremely confident that an increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events is a direct consequence of human modification of the climate system.”
Also in June, the weather pattern called “El Niño“ arrived.
El Niño is like adding lighter fuel to an already smoldering fire. “Under recently emergent El Niño conditions, temperatures are pushed higher worldwide, further compounding increases in temperature brought on by greenhouse gas emissions,” Ullrich said.
That combination of anthropogenic climate change and El Niño is “spiking some of these extreme events,” Mann said.
Animation of sea surface temperatures for past 6 months
NOAA
El Niño, which means “little boy” in Spanish, happens when the normal trade winds that blow west along the equator weaken and warmer water gets pushed o the east, toward the west coast of the Americas. In the United States, a moderate to strong El Niño in the fall and winter correlates with wetter-than-average conditions from southern California to the Gulf Coast, and drier-than-average conditions in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley.
When global warming and El Niño are hitting at the same time, “it can be difficult separating what is just a weather event or if it is part of a longer trend,” Timothy Canty, professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic science at University of Maryland, told CNBC.
But what is clear is that climate change makes it more likely that an extreme weather event will happen.
“Higher temperatures from climate change are indisputable, and with each degree increase we’re multiplying our changes of getting an extreme heat wave. In the wetter regions of the world, including the Northeastern US, we’re expecting more rain and more intense storms,” Ullrich told CNBC. “To avoid even more extreme changes, we need to both reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and act to clean up our polluted atmosphere.”
And as long as global greenhouse gas emissions continues to increase, the trend of more and more frequent extreme weather is expected to continue, Mann says.
Decreasing the greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels will help moderate the extreme weather trends.
An infographic titled “Sea ice in Antarctica drops to lowest level in 43 years” created in Ankara, Turkiye on March 01, 2023. The sea ice level surrounding the Antarctic continent has dropped to its lowest level since 1979.
Editorial #:1247611891, Getty Premium
“The good news is that the latest research shows that the surface warming driving more extreme weather events stabilizes quickly when carbon emissions cease. So we can prevent this all from getting worse and worst by decarbonizing our economy rapidly,” Mann told CNBC.
Every person’s contributions to reducing their climate footprint helps, Canty says.
“People have asked me essentially ‘What can I do as an individual that matters?’ and decide not to do anything and instead blame everyone else. Honestly, it’s societies made up of individuals that have gotten us to this point,” Canty said.
Individuals can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by making small changes like turning off the lights when they’re not in a room, turning down the heat or up the air conditioning when they’re not home, avoiding food waste and using public transportation.
Voting also matters a lot, Canty said. Government leaders have been able to make successful progress on international environmental crises in the past, Canty said, pointing to the Montreal Protocol. “There is a roadmap for working together to fix environmental problems in ways that benefit everyone,” Canty said.
“Tackling the ozone hole required governments, scientists, and businesses to work together and the Montreal Protocol and its amendments have been very successful not only for ozone but for climate,” Canty said, noting that the same chemicals that deplete the ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, are also very bad greenhouse gasses. “The ozone hole is slowly recovering and because of actions taken in the 80s we’ve avoided even worse planetary warming, and we still have air conditioning and hair spray which seemed to be the big panic at the time.”
If individuals and organizations don’t commit to aggressively reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, however, then this battery of extreme weather is a harbinger of the future.
“If we fail to act what we’re seeing right now is just the tip of the proverbial — melting — iceberg,” Mann told CNBC.
Formula One F1 – United States Grand Prix – Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, U.S. – October 23, 2022 Tim Cook waves the chequered flag to the race winner Red Bull’s Max Verstappen
Mike Segar | Reuters
Apple had two major launches last month. They couldn’t have been more different.
First, Apple revealed some of the artificial intelligence advancements it had been working on in the past year when it released developer versions of its operating systems to muted applause at its annual developer’s conference, WWDC. Then, at the end of the month, Apple hit the red carpet as its first true blockbuster movie, “F1,” debuted to over $155 million — and glowing reviews — in its first weekend.
While “F1” was a victory lap for Apple, highlighting the strength of its long-term outlook, the growth of its services business and its ability to tap into culture, Wall Street’s reaction to the company’s AI announcements at WWDC suggest there’s some trouble underneath the hood.
“F1” showed Apple at its best — in particular, its ability to invest in new, long-term projects. When Apple TV+ launched in 2019, it had only a handful of original shows and one movie, a film festival darling called “Hala” that didn’t even share its box office revenue.
Despite Apple TV+ being written off as a costly side-project, Apple stuck with its plan over the years, expanding its staff and operation in Culver City, California. That allowed the company to build up Hollywood connections, especially for TV shows, and build an entertainment track record. Now, an Apple Original can lead the box office on a summer weekend, the prime season for blockbuster films.
The success of “F1” also highlights Apple’s significant marketing machine and ability to get big-name talent to appear with its leadership. Apple pulled out all the stops to market the movie, including using its Wallet app to send a push notification with a discount for tickets to the film. To promote “F1,” Cook appeared with movie star Brad Pitt at an Apple store in New York and posted a video with actual F1 racer Lewis Hamilton, who was one of the film’s producers.
(L-R) Brad Pitt, Lewis Hamilton, Tim Cook, and Damson Idris attend the World Premiere of “F1: The Movie” in Times Square on June 16, 2025 in New York City.
Jamie Mccarthy | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Although Apple services chief Eddy Cue said in a recent interview that Apple needs the its film business to be profitable to “continue to do great things,” “F1” isn’t just about the bottom line for the company.
Apple’s Hollywood productions are perhaps the most prominent face of the company’s services business, a profit engine that has been an investor favorite since the iPhone maker started highlighting the division in 2016.
Films will only ever be a small fraction of the services unit, which also includes payments, iCloud subscriptions, magazine bundles, Apple Music, game bundles, warranties, fees related to digital payments and ad sales. Plus, even the biggest box office smashes would be small on Apple’s scale — the company does over $1 billion in sales on average every day.
But movies are the only services component that can get celebrities like Pitt or George Clooney to appear next to an Apple logo — and the success of “F1” means that Apple could do more big popcorn films in the future.
“Nothing breeds success or inspires future investment like a current success,” said Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.
But if “F1” is a sign that Apple’s services business is in full throttle, the company’s AI struggles are a “check engine” light that won’t turn off.
Replacing Siri’s engine
At WWDC last month, Wall Street was eager to hear about the company’s plans for Apple Intelligence, its suite of AI features that it first revealed in 2024. Apple Intelligence, which is a key tenet of the company’s hardware products, had a rollout marred by delays and underwhelming features.
Apple spent most of WWDC going over smaller machine learning features, but did not reveal what investors and consumers increasingly want: A sophisticated Siri that can converse fluidly and get stuff done, like making a restaurant reservation. In the age of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, the expectation of AI assistants among consumers is growing beyond “Siri, how’s the weather?”
The company had previewed a significantly improved Siri in the summer of 2024, but earlier this year, those features were delayed to sometime in 2026. At WWDC, Apple didn’t offer any updates about the improved Siri beyond that the company was “continuing its work to deliver” the features in the “coming year.” Some observers reduced their expectations for Apple’s AI after the conference.
“Current expectations for Apple Intelligence to kickstart a super upgrade cycle are too high, in our view,” wrote Jefferies analysts this week.
Siri should be an example of how Apple’s ability to improve products and projects over the long-term makes it tough to compete with.
It beat nearly every other voice assistant to market when it first debuted on iPhones in 2011. Fourteen years later, Siri remains essentially the same one-off, rigid, question-and-answer system that struggles with open-ended questions and dates, even after the invention in recent years of sophisticated voice bots based on generative AI technology that can hold a conversation.
Apple’s strongest rivals, including Android parent Google, have done way more to integrate sophisticated AI assistants into their devices than Apple has. And Google doesn’t have the same reflex against collecting data and cloud processing as privacy-obsessed Apple.
Some analysts have said they believe Apple has a few years before the company’s lack of competitive AI features will start to show up in device sales, given the company’s large installed base and high customer loyalty. But Apple can’t get lapped before it re-enters the race, and its former design guru Jony Ive is now working on new hardware with OpenAI, ramping up the pressure in Cupertino.
“The three-year problem, which is within an investment time frame, is that Android is racing ahead,” Needham senior internet analyst Laura Martin said on CNBC this week.
Apple’s services success with projects like “F1” is an example of what the company can do when it sets clear goals in public and then executes them over extended time-frames.
Its AI strategy could use a similar long-term plan, as customers and investors wonder when Apple will fully embrace the technology that has captivated Silicon Valley.
Wall Street’s anxiety over Apple’s AI struggles was evident this week after Bloomberg reported that Apple was considering replacing Siri’s engine with Anthropic or OpenAI’s technology, as opposed to its own foundation models.
The move, if it were to happen, would contradict one of Apple’s most important strategies in the Cook era: Apple wants to own its core technologies, like the touchscreen, processor, modem and maps software, not buy them from suppliers.
Using external technology would be an admission that Apple Foundation Models aren’t good enough yet for what the company wants to do with Siri.
“They’ve fallen farther and farther behind, and they need to supercharge their generative AI efforts” Martin said. “They can’t do that internally.”
Apple might even pay billions for the use of Anthropic’s AI software, according to the Bloomberg report. If Apple were to pay for AI, it would be a reversal from current services deals, like the search deal with Alphabet where the Cupertino company gets paid $20 billion per year to push iPhone traffic to Google Search.
The company didn’t confirm the report and declined comment, but Wall Street welcomed the report and Apple shares rose.
In the world of AI in Silicon Valley, signing bonuses for the kinds of engineers that can develop new models can range up to $100 million, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“I can’t see Apple doing that,” Martin said.
Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo bragging about hiring 11 AI experts from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s DeepMind. That came after Zuckerberg hired Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang to lead a new AI division as part of a $14.3 billion deal.
Meta’s not the only company to spend hundreds of millions on AI celebrities to get them in the building. Google spent big to hire away the founders of Character.AI, Microsoft got its AI leader by striking a deal with Inflection and Amazon hired the executive team of Adept to bulk up its AI roster.
Apple, on the other hand, hasn’t announced any big AI hires in recent years. While Cook rubs shoulders with Pitt, the actual race may be passing Apple by.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who bombarded President Donald Trump‘s signature spending bill for weeks, on Friday made his first comments since the legislation passed.
Musk backed a post on X by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who said the bill’s budget “explodes the deficit” and continues a pattern of “short-term politicking over long-term sustainability.”
The House of Representatives narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Thursday, sending it to Trump to sign into law.
Paul and Musk have been vocal opponents of Trump’s tax and spending bill, and repeatedly called out the potential for the spending package to increase the national debt.
On Monday, Musk called it the “DEBT SLAVERY bill.”
The independent Congressional Budget Office has said the bill could add $3.4 trillion to the $36.2 trillion of U.S. debt over the next decade. The White House has labeled the agency as “partisan” and continuously refuted the CBO’s estimates.
The bill includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts, increased spending for immigration enforcement and large cuts to funding for Medicaid and other programs.
It also cuts tax credits and support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles, a particularly sore spot for Musk, who has several companies that benefit from the programs.
“I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post in early June as the pair traded insults and threats.
Shares of Tesla plummeted as the feud intensified, with the company losing $152 billion in market cap on June 5 and putting the company below $1 trillion in value. The stock has largely rebounded since, but is still below where it was trading before the ruckus with Trump.
Tesla one-month stock chart.
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger and Erin Doherty contributed to this article.
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