Gang Huang

A gunner adjusts the eyepiece of a telescope: one more click, and the blurry blob becomes a crisp image. Climate scientists at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, made a similar adjustment to their model ICM.

In 2023, the ocean off the coast of Peru warmed so much that fishermen came back empty-handed, while meteorologists argued over the strength of the upcoming El Niño. The sea surface temperature map they were looking at was the only one available, but how much could they trust it?