The headline is|was clunky enough to require something, the saving grace here is that the HN headline (as of now) isn't something whipped up by the submitter but a paraphrasing of an actual quote from the article's author.
If you prefer (breaking the HN title length):
If the anomaly does not stabilize by August — a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events — then the world will be in uncharted territory.
~ Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, March 2024
If you prefer (breaking the HN title length):
~ Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, March 2024