00:00Friends in southern China, get ready. This winter, you might freeze like never before.
00:06And the more you sweat today, the harder winter will strike.
00:10Deep in the Pacific Ocean, a pool of hot water spanning 10 million square kilometers,
00:15larger than all of China, is boiling. On July 14, China's climate center issued a warning,
00:22this super El Niño will likely surpass 1998. The last time this monster showed up,
00:28China mobilized millions to fight floods. Indonesia's forests burned for three months.
00:35Over 20,000 people didn't survive that year. Now it's back. And it's meaner than 28 years ago.
00:43But here's the tricky part. Everyone's saying it'll be the warmest winter ever.
00:49Don't believe it. Warm winter is a statistical trick. It's an average.
00:55In 2015, another super El Niño year, people in Guangdong celebrated Christmas in t-shirts.
01:03Warmest winter ever, they said. Then, right after New Year's, an arctic blast crashed south.
01:11The zero-degree line crossed the mountains of Nanling for the first time since 1949.
01:17Guangzhou saw snow. Even so, that winter's average was still above normal.
01:23See the trick. Warmest winter and freezing to death are not opposites.
01:29They're two sides of the same coin. So why does the south get hit harder?
01:34Two words, wet cold. El Niño shifts the subtropical high, pulling warm, moist air north.
01:42Southern winters become gray, wet, and bone-chilly. Northern cold is dry and honest,
01:49turn on the heater, you're fine. Southern cold is a different species. It's wet.
01:55It seeps through your blanket, your clothes, your walls. Three-day-old laundry still drips.
02:02And south of the Huaiha River, there's no central heating. There's nowhere to hide.
02:08But here's the scariest part. El Niño doesn't just warm the ocean. It hijacks the entire climate
02:16system. When it should rain, it doesn't. Where it shouldn't rain, it floods. El Niño hits your
02:25wallet too. Global harvests shrink, rice from Southeast Asia, sugar and coffee from Brazil.
02:32Your grocery bill goes up. Your bubble tea gets more expensive. Even the candies at Chinese New
02:39Year will cost more. Your electricity bill will spike. Southerners, this winter your air conditioner
02:46won't stop. Turn it off and your room becomes an icebox. China's peak power load this summer hit
02:531.61 billion kilowatts. That's an extra province's worth of energy demand, out of nowhere. But don't
03:02panic buy supplies. China in 2026 is not China in 1998. We saw this monster months away. Reservoirs
03:12are pre-emptied. Supplies are pre-stocked. The real fear is over. But zoom out for a second.
03:20Think about what just happened here. A patch of seawater, 2 degrees warmer. You wouldn't feel it
03:27on your skin. Yet spread across an area bigger than China, it rewrites winter for half the planet.
03:34Whether you turn on your heater, whether your New Year's dinner costs double, it all hinges on that
03:391 degree shift. We built satellites. We run supercomputers. We can see this wave coming 6 months
03:48away. But seeing it and stopping it, that's separated by an entire ocean. The smartest minds
03:55on earth stared at that sea for half a year. And the most honest answer they can give you.
04:01The weather is changing. Tonight, go dry your blankets.
04:18Go dry your blankets. You can't see it. You've been chillin' on the inside, beautiful
04:28lists. Maybe!
04:38You've wanna cold you till I've got to run.
04:45But you spent all day. You've just been 관리를 and bed.
04:47I haven't got to oxidation your blankets. It's also really going to warm up towards China, this
04:48It actually has a 6 mein fast friend.
04:48Once you have seen.
05:16Transcription by CastingWords
05:46Transcription by CastingWords
05:48Transcription by CastingWords
