Winter Sweeps The Carpathians

Winter has arrived in the Carpathians in September, spreading snow across the high ground of both Ukraine and Romania—and already forcing plows onto the roads.

On Ukraine’s Mount Pip Ivan, the season’s first snow arrived Sept 22 as temperatures dropped to -1C (30.2F). Two days later, the cold had deepened to -3C (26.6F), with rescuers warning that full winter conditions had taken hold across the summit.

Farther south, the Romanian Carpathians were hit harder still.

Heavy September snow buried sections of the famed Transfăgărășan Highway overnight into Sept 24, particularly around Bâlea Lac. Road crews deployed multiple snow-clearing vehicles and more than five metric tons of salt, warning motorists of “winter conditions.”

Winter has wasted little time.

Japan Freezes Early As Cold Record Falls

Japan has logged its first subfreezing reading of the season, 12 days earlier than last year and a week ahead of the average.

At Numakawa, northern Hokkaido, the temperature sank to -0.4C (31.3F) early Sept 25 — Japan’s first subfreezing reading of the season outside high mountain stations, 6.9C (12.4F) below normal and more typical of early November.

The cold was widespread, too.

Of Hokkaido’s 174 reporting stations, 164 came in below normal.

Nakatonbetsu, Utanobori and Shumarinai fell to 0.7C (33.3F), Nishi-Okoppe to 1.7C (35.1F), and Rikubetsu to 2C (35.6F).

At Teshio, the minimum reached 0.1C (32.2F) — 8.4C (15.1F) below normal. JMA data show the previous Sept 25 minimum record there was 1.2C (34.2F), set in 2002, meaning Friday’s low broke the daily record by 1.1C (2F).

Records at Teshio extend back to the late 1970s.

This year’s early freeze follows two winters that repeatedly rewrote Japan’s snow record books.

In February 2025, Obihiro was buried under 120 cm (47.2 in) in just 12 hours — more than double its previous all-time record of 57 cm (22.4 in). Its 24-hour total also set a record at 124 cm (48.8 in), with multiple Hokkaido stations setting new 12-, 24-, 48- and 72-hour snowfall records.

Last winter brought more: Takanosu reached an all-time snow depth of 160 cm (63 in), Kazuno 146 cm (57.5 in), while Sapporo set a new all-time 48-hour snowfall record of 65 cm (25.6 in).

The World Still Runs On Fossil Fuels

The global energy picture looks very different from the painted narrative: oil, coal and natural gas still supply more than four-fifths of everything.

The IEA’s latest complete World Energy Balances, updated in July 2026 with global data through 2024, puts fossil fuels at 80.5% of global primary energy supply.

Oil accounts for 30%, coal 27.6% and natural gas 22.9%.

Renewables supply 14.5%. But the majority of that is not wind turbines and solar panels. It is biomass.

Solid biomass alone accounts for 7.2% of total global energy. Add liquid biofuels, biogas and renewable waste at another 1.2%, and bioenergy-related sources reach roughly 8.4% — comfortably more than half of the renewable total.

Hydro contributes another 2.5%, geothermal and marine 0.7%.

Solar: 1.5%.

Wind: 1.4%.

Combined, wind and solar provide just 2.9% of global primary energy.

This is not merely electricity generation, where wind and solar have grown far larger. It is the entire energy system — transport, heating, industry and power. The IEA database covers global energy balances across 68 products and 98 flows.

The global energy system is still, overwhelmingly, oil, coal and gas. And even within the renewable slice, the dominant source remains old-fashioned biomass — not wind and solar.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Weakening Faster

Earth’s magnetic field has been weakening for centuries—but that decline has accelerated sharply in recent years. Now a 2026 study finds rapid changes—originating deep within the planet—are occurring fast enough to wrong-foot the latest international magnetic-field model.

ESA estimates that Earth’s magnetic field has lost around 9% of its strength globally over the past 200 years.

The decline is not uniform.

Its most obvious weak spot is the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), a sprawling region between South America and Africa where the field is substantially weaker than elsewhere.

Between 1970 and 2020, minimum field strength there fell from roughly 24,000 to 22,000 nanoteslas.

More recently, the weakening has intensified.

ESA’s latest Swarm satellite analysis found that the area covered by the SAA continued expanding between 2014 and 2025, with a region southwest of Africa beginning to weaken even faster after 2020.

Lead researcher Chris Finlay said something in that region is causing the field to weaken “in a more intense way.”

And now scientists are seeing rapid changes deeper down.

A 2026 paper by Chulliat, Nair and Califf identified a pronounced secular-acceleration pulse centered on 2022, followed by a geomagnetic jerk in 2024 across Western Europe and North America.

Earth’s magnetic field is generated largely by moving liquid iron in the outer core. It is always changing. A secular-acceleration pulse means the rate of that change suddenly speeds up or shifts, while a geomagnetic “jerk” is an abrupt change in its trend.

The researchers traced the 2022 pulse to rapidly changing magnetic patterns near the core-mantle boundary, some 2,900 km (1,800 miles) beneath the surface.

Then came the 2024 jerk.

Magnetic observatories in Britain, France, Canada and the U.S. recorded sharp changes, with similar signals seen elsewhere across Europe and North America.

The changes were fast enough to catch the models out.

IGRF-14—the latest International Geomagnetic Reference Field—was designed in 2024 to forecast how Earth’s field would evolve through 2030. Yet less than a year later, real-world observations were already diverging from its predictions in all three magnetic components, particularly Y and Z.

The researchers blame nonlinear changes in Earth’s core that the model did not anticipate.

The picture is therefore becoming a little clearer.

Earth’s magnetic shield is weakening. Its largest weak spot is expanding. Parts of that weak spot have been weakening faster since 2020. And, beneath it all, the core-generated field is undergoing abrupt changes quickly enough to outpace our newest forecasts.

None of this proves that a magnetic reversal or even excursion is imminent.

But the field is demonstrably waning.

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Thank you for your continued support.

Enjoy your weekend.

I’ll be back Monday, as always.

Best,
Cap