To all Governors, Mayors, First Responders, and anyone entrusted with public safety, disaster preparedness and relief:

We the undersigned consisting of scientists, meteorologists, and concerned citizens are greatly alarmed by the lack of public discourse, urgency and planning surrounding what is an impending, large scale, historic public emergency.

More and more data and modeling every day indicates we are within 3 to 5 months of experiencing the most dramatic El Niño warming event in recorded history.

Ocean temperatures in the central eastern Pacific will rise between 5 to 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit (3-4 degrees Celsius) peaking in October of this year. This will trigger a heating escalation through 2027 and into 2028 that will push already dangerously high planetary air and sea temperatures to near catastrophic levels.

This El Niño driven warming will lead to significantly more global flooding, fires, storms, droughts, deadly heat events, dangerous turbulence, and most concerning, a significant threat to food supply chains, crops, and power grids.

The previous strongest recorded El Niño occurred in 1877 leading to 40 million deaths worldwide from famine.

And this coming El Niño event looks to be even stronger.

And even more critically, it will occur on top of already record high sea and air temperatures.

Many of us through the years have attempted to warn the public during human caused rapid warming events about the increased risk of extreme weather events. We have had to watch as historic fires destroyed two cities in an unprepared Los Angeles, an actual hurricane hit Asheville North Carolina, campers were swept away and killed by flash floods in Texas, Corpus Christi runs out of water and on and on and on.

But the scale and threat of this coming warming event is simply too large to ignore in the name of business/politics as usual.

States, cities, and counties should be immediately:

• reinforcing river banks and lakes against all time high cresting numbers
• increasing funding for fire fighting and rescue
• running geological tests on populated hillsides
• bolstering power grids
• building more tornado shelters, cooling and high ground centers
• increasing life guards and warning systems for beaches
• informing citizens of potentially life threatening increased risk

Instead the signatories of this cry for action see mostly silence and inaction.

We know many simply aren’t able to process the science behind this entreaty through anything other than the will of big donors, party politics and poll numbers.

But for those that still take the responsibilities of their office, appointment or job as something sacred and more important than career or donor money please, we urge you not to dismiss this letter.

SIGNED BY