Something Big Has Changed for the World's Largest Ocean

Aloha everyone, geophysicist Stefan Burns here reporting for you live from Hawaii, right now in the middle of the Pacific, where we have three major cyclones that are rampaging across the waters. We have Hurricane Lau, currently a Category 4, expected to become Category 5. We're going to be talking a lot about this hurricane as it's expected to impact the Hawaiian islands, at least with a lot of rain, perhaps some wind, specifically the western islands of Kauai, Oahu, but that could also steer more towards the east in the next few days. We'll talk about that. We have Hurricane Karina here and also Hurricane Marie, which we were concerned about in terms of its track guidance going up into SoCal. That could still happen, but looking less likely now that it's evolved a little bit. It's looking like it's going to shoot off this direction, but we'll just have to wait and see. We do have really high sea surface temperatures right off the coast, where they do decrease more if we go up here. The big concern really of these three is Hurricane Lau, currently a Category 4, but expected to re-strengthen to Category 5 imminently, and it is going to be doing this northern swing right there. And well, depending on just how much of a swing it does, it could kind of go like this and just barely bypass the Hawaiian islands. Less likely, but a concern. We should all be aware of this, especially those living on the islands. It could go like this and kind of redirect and slam into the western Hawaiian islands of Kauai, Oahu, meaning perhaps even more this direction, which just got passed over by Hurricane Lala. But this is a Category 4, expected to strengthen to Category 5, and is expected to be a Category 4 as it does this northward track. So that's a lot stronger than Hurricane Lala, which was a Category 1. That was ripping roofs off, that was causing extensive flash flooding and damage and more. So this is a very serious situation. We're expecting this to occur on Monday Hawaiian time through Tuesday. This is all universal time with these time stamps here. But this could certainly be a pretty big buzzsaw, and well, it's being further fueled by new solar activity. We're having some solar flares, some new sunspots on the sun, peppering the earth with more energy, putting more plasma into the ionosphere. And so just in general, when you have more solar activity, expect the unexpected. So all that and much more in today's video. So let's begin by examining our solar activity. We have our past seven days of x-ray flux. So the sun emits light across a whole range of frequencies, going from radio to microwave to visible. Then of course, also higher frequencies like ultraviolet, extreme ultraviolet, x-ray. Light travels in straight lines unbent by magnetic fields or anything of that sort, reaches us in 8.3 minutes. So this high vibe light, the extreme ultraviolet x-ray light, it immediately hits the ionosphere and charges up the upper atmosphere with more plasma. And that influences the weather in the troposphere. So when you have more solar activity, you have in general kind of more unpredictable volatile weather here on earth. This relates to cyclones, tornadoes, and other weather phenomena. So we see that we've effectively had pretty low solar activity. Going up till September, we had this 3.0 M class flare that popped off from the limb, showing that there was a new sunspot rotating into earth-facing view. And since then, as these sunspots have rotated into view, we've had new solar flares with another M class flare right there, the second strongest category. So nothing too crazy yet, like high M class or even X class flares. These are order of magnitude jumps by the way. But in general, when you have sunspots on the earth-facing side, you just get more ionization of earth's ionosphere and just a little bit more turbulence overall with all that entails. So stronger electric currents pulsing through the ocean to earth's lithosphere, the crust, more volatile weather, and things of that nature. So when you have three buzzsaw cyclones hurtling through and sweeping across the Pacific ocean, all of them having the capability perhaps to have landfall in areas that we don't want landfall, it's important to be mindful of this. So nothing too crazy here yet that we did see a huge eruption of plasma from the sun just over the past 24 hours. Let's check it out. Here we will see that massive eruption of plasma that occurred on the sun just in the last 24 hours. Boom shakalaka, a huge solar plasma filament, an explosion launching off effectively. And we have some further activity from that region. Since then, you'll see some smaller little plasma outbursts that occurred. In general, it looks like we have some activity coming in from this far side of the sun now rotating into view. This is the eastern limb of the sun, solar coordinate system. And so the sun takes about 14 days to rotate from here to there, meaning that any activity that we're seeing from sunspots here, they could remain active all the way through. We see some other zones of heightened activity, but basically these are just now starting to show up. So in the next seven days, they are roughly going to be Earth-centered and direct. And maybe we have a risk of more solar flares and even some solar storms launching out at that time frame. But as of right now, it's more eye candy, we could call it. But these solar flares are charging up Earth's ionosphere from more of a lower baseline. And so we're already seeing big cyclones in the Pacific because of the super El Nino, one of the strongest ever on record thus far, expected to go into 2027. This is historic El Nino. And then you get the declining phase of solar cycle 25, peppering us with more energy and activity as a result. And well, this could really get quite wild. So here we see that with our 304 angstrom view. Let's see what it looks like with the coronagraph. And here we have our coronagraph view, which basically puts a disk over the sun to block out the majority of the light. So we can see these fainter emissions and outflows and solar storms that launch out. Basically the plasma, the solar wind and solar storms. Here we have Mercury. We just had a superior conjunction of Mercury, not that long ago. So that was a Mercury sun alignment with the Earth, Mercury on the far side. And here we see these really big storms launching out. So we see multiple of them. Okay. Meaning that there's some big activity coming into view. And again, in about seven days, that's going to be Earth direct. So we hope that it stays calm. Often we see that the sunspots show a lot of activity on the limb. And then for some reason, they kind of go quiet when the Earth center direct, and then they get active again, perhaps after that. That's not every time, but that is a notable trend that a lot of space, whether people notice and see, so that is possible. But as of right now, basically we have a lot of solar activity coming in and regardless of whether these solar storms that launch out, hit us or not the solar flares, that light flux does charge up the ions here, which is the biggest concern for a big storms and weather systems in general. We've been seeing huge amounts of electrical activity with weather systems across the globe. I mean, massive electrical storms in Europe, of course, the cyclones in the Pacific, not just the central and Eastern Pacific, but also Western Pacific, or they've been having lots of typhoons like Japan, Taiwan, China, et cetera. So there's just been a lot of activity this year because of how much this super El Nino is perturbing all the different systems. And that's why this hurricane Lauel is a concern for Hawaii, because typically there are these atmospheric dynamics that steer storms away. Clearly things are changing and now we're having these storms be steered towards the Hawaiian islands. Let's talk about Lauel a bit more. So here again, we have Zoom Earth showing Lauel, but this is back all the way on the 28th of August when it was just forming. So it was a tropical storm at this point, 45 mile per hour winds, nothing too crazy. We also start to see Carina form here. We see its intense phase later on. This is, you know, the up-to-date and the forecast there, but let's go forward in time. We see it to really start to form and get strong. Carina being much bigger, but Lauel being quite intense. Once it really formed here, it did reach a category five, as you can see back there on the 2nd of September. And thankfully Carina is just passing more to the North. So it doesn't look like it's going to be impacting the Hawaiian islands, but we see Lauel there really forming strongly. It's a big cyclone. And the big concern is that moving to the North, which is very similar to what happened in 1992 with Hurricane Iniki, which hit Kauai at like a category four level, destroyed tons of homes, caused tons of damage, like 3 billion in damage. It was a big deal. So that is the big concern with that. We can look at our archives for this. So this is 1992. We see different cyclone tracks here. Notice how a lot of them reduced down to tropical depressions as they got close to the island. But look at what happened with Iniki here. It was a major hurricane and it just buzzsawed right over Kauai and then continued on to the North. So there is historic precedent for this storm track. That's the key point here is that we have seen this before. In fact, that was one of the worst landfalls ever for the islands. And so normally the Hawaiian islands don't get these sort of cyclones that hit them because there is a strong subtropical ridge, which exists at about 30 degrees North in latitude. You have evaporation occurring at the equator. It's a hot air and humid air rises and then around 30 degrees it cools and precipitates down. There's this natural kind of barrier that forms the subtropical ridge. So this Super El Nino is disturbing that. That's effectively what we're seeing. And with that disturbed, now you are able to have these storms whip through this area where typically they do not. If we look at some of our track guidance for this, we see the average is going off there to the left of Kauai. But we do have some of these models showing it steering more to the East. Only a few. We hope that's not what happens. It's not the most likely outcome by far, but we are seeing that. Here's another one. Again, most of them showing them going off to the West. That's Oahu by the way. This is Kauai. So it looks like with this track guidance it's moving off to the West, but of course these storms are pretty large. So we're probably looking regardless at more rain than normal for Kauai, which is one of the areas on the globe which gets the most rainfall around the world. So they are used to a lot of rain. They could get even more as a result of this and there's a risk of flash floods and more as a result. Here we see our guidance here provided by NOAA and the U.S. Navy. And so we see it making this sharp turn. This is what's expected. This is going to be occurring this weekend and then moving up like that. And we see the overall kind of risk area here extending out to Oahu. And this is in terms of higher wind speeds and higher rain. So I'm on Maui. We'll probably be fine, but we'll have to wait and see. Again, if it goes a little bit more this direction, then we have a concern. And so this is exactly what happened in 1992 and that was hugely destructive. A big problem. That's why a lot of people are worried. They're ready, you know, going to Costco and stocking up on supplies. It's kind of a mad rush happening right now as a result of that. Here we see what's happened thus far in 2026. This is the path of Hurricane Lala. So it passed right by the big island and also sideswiped Maui. I just went to a winery yesterday on Maui, the only one that's there. They lost a lot of their vineyard because of Lala. Just the flooding and the winds and everything was pretty destructive. So that was a big deal already. And now we have another storm likely to hit, but this time for the western islands. That is a concern. Now, just to quickly touch on earthquake activity. For the past week, we see that we've had a reduction in overall global seismicity as compared to like, you know, last month, last month in July, were very, very crazy. Lots of high magnitude 7 earthquakes causing big problems. Here for the past week, we only see 6.2 South Sandwich Islands, also the 6.3 here, Alaska. The thing to be mindful of with this guy is the fact that we have an earthquake swarm that has started as a result of this 6.2. So if we go here, we see quite a lot of magnitude 5s. Look at that. We have 5.5, 5.3, 5.3, 5.2, 5.2, right? This is an unusual number of magnitude 5 aftershocks for a magnitude 6.3 earthquake. And a typical rule of thumb is that the highest magnitude aftershock will be one magnitude less than the main shock. So that would put this at a 5.3. Well, in fact, it's a 5.5, which is about probably double the strength of a 5.3 in terms of total seismic energy release. And then we also have two 5.3s. So most likely is that this is just a 6.3 with this stronger than normal earthquake swarm. But it is possible that this is a foreshock swarm in general for a larger event magnitude 7 or greater, probably more like magnitude 7.5 or greater. So that's not the most likely outcome, but this earthquake swarm is a little odd in its distribution of earthquakes. This isn't showing the other earthquakes too. I mean, I could put on all earthquakes 2.5 and greater, and we'll see that these numbers really expand even more. And if I put on all earthquakes right here, you will see, and let's do seven days, all magnitudes. You see that the swarm really swells up with a high number of earthquakes, 157 in the map area. So if we do, let's say you have a magnitude 8.5 rupture in this area, which this could get magnitude 8.5, magnitude 9 earthquakes, no problem. It's a huge subduction trench, right? If you had that, you would have a tsunami very likely propagate out across the Pacific. So right now, it's got a while, but a lot of threats right now for the Hawaiian islands between this Hurricane Lau and also this earthquake swarm, unlikely to cause problems, but it would be better if this wasn't happening at all. Let's just say that. And it is happening. So we're watching this closely as well. I will keep you up to date on everything that's happening here with the cyclones in the Pacific. The last thing to cover would be Hurricane Marie, currently Category 2. The initial forecast for this showed it basically going to where it is now and then sweeping up to the north. Now the ensemble forecast, they've shifted a little bit more here to the west, but we're still in that period where in the next couple of days, we really know what's going to do. Most likely, it does continue along this trajectory, but in general, I think the development, the rapid development of this hurricane and its proximity to the coast of California and also California in general is a good warning for this super El Nino because we are having extremely high sea surface temperatures here in SoCal. And so if there ever was a time for a cyclone to make impact at, let's say, even Category 1 level, that's probably the max it would be. It would lose strength as it got closer to land and the sea surface temperatures go down. They're much warmer down here, by the way, right? But it would be this time. This is when it would happen. So a little bit of a warning because September just started, folks. October is next and then November is after that. So there is plenty of time for these sort of developments to occur. We see a new disturbance area where we could get new storms to develop outlined here. And with three cyclones already, there's a lot of chalk and a lot of swell and surf right now too. So, I mean, I'm noticing this here on Maui that the the waves are just a little stronger and there's a lot bit more wind than normal. Often that's the case with Hawaii, but also San Diego, bit stronger surf and swell. So be mindful of that if you live in these areas. And we'll see how this solar activity affects not only these cyclones, but other storm systems that are active right now around the globe. And we'll keep a close eye on that earthquake swarm in Alaska. So thank you all so much for watching, everyone. I've been your host, Stefan Burns, geophysicist, geologist, space weatherman. I release videos almost daily. So if you'd like to stay up to date, then please subscribe. We talk about earthquakes, severe weather, geomagnetic storming, volcanic activity, solar activity, space weather, planetary alignments, resonances, consciousness, and more. And also would like to direct your attention to the fact that we are holding a special sale on the website at earthevolution.com slash store. That is the URL right there. The reason why is that it is my birthday. So September 5th, we're holding a big sale as a result. This is birthday 15, all lowercase, one word for 15% off your order. And we have all organic tea blends here made and mixed in house. My dad and I run this also some merchandise and other products. We have the authentic blue lotus flower back in stock. So check this out, 15% off your entire order available to everyone in the United States. We'll ship this out as quickly as we can. Thank you all so much. Wishing each and every single one of you well, please take care of yourselves. I'll see you all in the next video.