In Madrigal’s telling, climate changey stands in for both the weather event and the mental state. In the 2010s, even when weird weather is enjoyable, it feels like a planetary memento mori. Say goodbye to that white Christmas—more of this is coming, and also, by the way, you may die in it.

An odd byproduct of writing and reporting about global warming and ocean acidification is that you’re forced to conserve your anxiety. The whole thing is so worrying (despite the recent Paris agreement) that it doesn’t make sense to freak out over a stretch of nice days. And that’s especially true when there’s a scientific basis for not connecting this warmth to global warming.

Which is to say: Despite how climate changey these warm days feel, they’re almost certainly the product of El Niño, not global warming.

El Niño is a phase in the Pacific Ocean’s multi-year cycle. During El Niño, warmer surface waters collect in the ocean’s tropical and eastern half. (That is: The water off the western coasts of Central America—and thousands of miles beyond that, into the open sea—is much, much warmer than usual.) A band of low pressure forms over these warm waters. This week, that persistent low pressure has bumped the Jet Stream much further north than usual, sending subtropical air toward the Eastern United States.

This year’s El Niño is one of the strongest ever: Last month, meteorologists ruled it “too big to fail.” It’s helped bring cool rains to California, tempering that state’s long drought; it also played a role in the massive Indonesia fires in September and October and the imminent drought in the Horn of Africa.

Again, scientists haven’t connected the strength of this El Niño to climate change, so you should feel free to enjoy the warmth, despite the climate-changey vibes. But a recent study indicated that global warming is likely to bring more mega El Niños like this one.

Here in the East, it’s looking like we’ll have a warm, not a white, Christmas. So perhaps as you go out for your unorthodox Boxing Day jog, think back to 2010. That year, we experienced the Pacific Ocean’s other major phase, La Niña, which is when warm waters pool in its western half. And while El Niño can bring snow, too—in fact, some meteorologists think we’re in for major storms in February of next year—La Niña of 2010 did not fail to deliver: A post-Christmas blizzard carried more than a foot of snow to many of the same towns that have their windows open right now.

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“Someone needs to give us a good slap upside the head and say: ‘Look, this is about you and you need to pay attention.’”

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