--- title: "The Lab" canonical: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/24/lab" publication: "The Docket" publisher: "The Docket" language: "en-US" guide: "https://anchor.is/docket/llms.txt" permalink: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/24/lab" issue: 24 section: "lab" description: "Experimental content exploring innovative ways to illuminate our climate-changed world" authors: ["David Kern","Ivy Marlowe"] published: 2026-03-22 updated: 2026-03-18 articles: 10 --- # The Docket > The Docket is a weekly publication about the decisions climate change is already putting in front of Americans: whether to buy the generator, whether the flood insurance is enough, whether to stay in the city you love. It follows the people making those choices now. It treats climate anxiety as a reasonable response to real conditions. It won't tell you what to do, but it shows the tradeoffs clearly. [Read on the website]() ## Issue 24 — The Lab Experimental content exploring innovative ways to illuminate our climate-changed world ### Missed Connections - [Missed Connections — Western Water, Spring 2026]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-03-18 · Format: Missed Connections On March 17, the National Weather Service issued simultaneous warnings for heat stroke and hypothermia along the same stretch of Colorado river. A hundred degrees on the bank. Snowmelt cold enough to kill you in the water. Both true at once, on the same afternoon, and nobody had a name for that. ### Compatibility Assessment - [It's a Match!™]() — By [Ivy Marlowe]() · Published 2026-03-18 · Format: Compatibility Assessment In February, NOAA retired the method it had used for decades to track El Niño and La Niña. The ocean had warmed so much that the old baseline was measuring a planet that no longer exists. Five of the last six winters were actually La Niña patterns driving persistent drought. Nobody told you. The definition just hadn't updated its status. ### The Exit Interview - [The Colorado River Would Like to Say a Few Things Before the Contract Expires]() — Published 2026-03-18 *The Colorado River has been in a managed relationship with the American West for 104 years. The terms were set in 1922, when seven states divided its water based on numbers that were wrong at the time and have only gotten worse since. This year, the agreement governing that arrangement expires. No replacement has been finalized. Snowpack across the basin sits at roughly half of normal. Lake Powell expects 52% of its usual inflow. On the morning we sat down, March 18, 2026, Colorado's governor activated the state Drought Task Force amid a heat wave pushing temperatures 30 degrees above normal.* ### Dear Abby - [Ask the Columnist: My City's Relationship With Sea Level Was Based on a Lie]() — Published 2026-03-18 We just found out that ninety percent of coastal hazard assessments used the wrong baseline. The ocean was a foot closer to us than anyone official ever said. In parts of the Global South, three feet closer. Our seawalls, our zoning maps, our insurance models, our arguments before international funding bodies. All of it built on a number that was wrong before the first projection was ever run. We have been planning around a coastline that does not exist. How do we start over? ### Currently Seeking We put the climate on the apps. Dating profiles are the one format where desperation wears a readable face. Where you list what you need, what you lost, what you absolutely cannot survive again, and a stranger decides in three seconds whether you matter. So we gave that courtesy to six climate systems currently looking for something. A stable relationship. Accurate data. A budget line above zero. A winter. Some are recently single. Some are trapped in situationships with federal agencies that won't commit. One just discovered the measurements it trusted were wrong from the start. Swipe accordingly. - **Western Snowpack, Five Months Old, Already Done** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-18 Tag: Snow Eater Status: It's over. Born November 2025. Dying five weeks ahead of schedule. Interests: cold nights, patience, slow release into rivers that need me in June. Looking for: a winter that commits. Dealbreaker: March heat domes. Colorado's state climatologist says he can't find precedent for what just ate me alive. He's right. There isn't one. - **High Plains Climate Center, Resurrected, Expiring Soon** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-18 Tag: Data Limbo Status: It's complicated. Last active April 2025. Came back 36 hours later on a one-year emergency contract, which is the climate-data equivalent of your ex texting "hey" at 2 a.m. Interests: drought monitoring, freeze dates, the Cattle Comfort Index (real thing, look it up). Looking for: a government that can say the word "climate" out loud. Dealbreaker: 150 years of weather records a FOX4 meteorologist called unrecoverable. He wasn't being dramatic. - **EPA Endangerment Finding, Seventeen, Recently Dumped, Thriving** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-18 Tag: Legal Irony Status: Recently single. Age: 17 (2009–February 2026, when the administration rescinded me). Interests: the Clean Air Act, regulatory coherence, public health. Looking for: honestly? Nothing. I was the one being looked for. Dealbreaker: getting killed and discovering your corpse is the best evidence state attorneys general have ever had. Turns out rescinding the federal finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health hands every state climate lawsuit a gift. The defense used to say "the EPA has this handled." Now what? - **Tuvalu, Seventeen Feet Above Sea Level, Supposedly** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-18 Tag: Wrong Baseline Status: Drowning while being told the water isn't that high yet. Age: thousands of years, but who's counting when the map says you're fine. Interests: accurate tide gauges, science conducted south of the equator, someone measuring from where I actually stand. Looking for: sea-level data built on real coastal measurements instead of satellite proxies calibrated in the North Atlantic. Dealbreaker: a Nature study just found the ocean around me is up to a full meter higher than 90% of published studies assumed. The baseline was wrong. Not the projections. The starting number. - **Mauna Loa, Sixty-Eight, Lease Expires in August** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-18 Tag: Last Reading Status: Facing eviction. Age: 68 years of continuous CO₂ measurement. The longest unbroken atmospheric record on Earth. Interests: the long view. 424 ppm and climbing. Looking for: a lease renewal by August and someone who understands what "continuous" means once you break it. Dealbreaker: a proposed federal budget line reading "Total, Climate Research: $0." In 1963 the National Science Foundation caught me when my funding collapsed. That net got cut too. - **El Niño, Seventy-Five, Just Found Out Everything** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-18 Tag: Identity Crisis Status: It's very complicated. Age: 75 years as a named phenomenon, though apparently I've been misread for all of them. Interests: tropical Pacific temperatures, atmospheric teleconnections, figuring out who I actually am. Looking for: an index that accounts for the fact that the whole ocean is warming, not just my corner of it. Dealbreaker: NOAA just retroactively reclassified my entire history. Last winter wasn't neutral. It was La Niña the whole time. I don't know what I am anymore. Neither do the forecasters. ## Other sections in Issue 24 - [Human Stories]() - [Cascading Effects]() - [Emerging Science]() - [Future Tense]() - [Climate Past]() ## More - [Publication guide]() - [Issue archive]()