How El Nino Works

I thought you were going to select to play. Uh wave of mutilation by the Pixies. Is that about? Uh, it's in the It's in the lyric of Kiss, Mermaids Road Deal Nino walk the sands with the crustaceans. I never realized that's what he was saying. Yeah, but writing Neilno as sort of as you'll see, it's not a way it's wrong. Black Francis, you know you were wrong, Charles. Can we call him Charles Frank, But in the Pixies he was black Francis. Yeah, he's back to black. Yeah Frank,

black black Frank, black man. I saw him in Uh, that you and I are both lifelong Pixies fans, obviously, but I saw him do a solo show. Uh. May have been with the Catholics, even in a tiny little bar in l A when I lived there and there were I couldn't figure it out they were. I mean, it's not like seventy people. I was like, why are you playing here? And why aren't there a thousand other people trying to get in here illegally? And he you know,

he's eight feet in front of me. Well, I mean the Catholics were okay, but oh man, those albums are great. Not door busting great. Oh I think that the Catholics albums are really good. I like just playing numbers. Well, okay, you know anyway, great show. Rode, Yeah, I know exactly the line you're talking about. But I never realized Rode Nino. He pronounces things oddly. Maybe he thought he yeah, I don't know, I think that it was like Nino or

something like that. Or maybe he didn't mean the weather phenomenon. Maybe he meant he got on the back of a small boy and wrote around or the course or the christ Child. Maybe because if you live in Spain or Spanish speaking country, and you turn on say the weather channel. Uh, they will say things like, well, the christ Child is going to be way worse than the last time the christ Child came around. That's what they say. Because El Nino, we should say, when it's capitalized means the cry child,

that's right. If it's lower case, it just means the boy in Spanish, but uppercase the baby Jesus. Yeah, and uh, I never knew this until we researched this. Uh In Peru, the Spanish colonizers coined that term when they discovered this phenomenon themselves around Christmas. So how about that? Yeah, it was pretty cool, I guess. And we should mention historically

this is nothing new. Uh No, they written records date back to fifty and again of course, and there are there's geological evidence that dates it back possibly if you like Harvard Science as much as uh A hundred and twenty four thousand years, because some scientists there are one in particular examined annual deposits on Indonesian coral and said, hey, I think this is this coral looks like it was affected by El Nino d and four thousand years like they I also saw they found evidence that um a

very early um Peruvian culture collapsed because of the climate change brought about by El Nio. Interesting based on some like the disappearance of some certain mollusk varieties. Yeah, pretty cool stuff. So nothing new. We should probably tell people if you don't know what El Nino is, what el Nino is? Do you want see? Sure? I do like I do with lots of things that don't understand. I go to kids science websites. Yeah. I found one and said,

I was like, huh. I was reading this article three times and I got to the bottom and it said fifth grade Earth Science module. I was like, man, it really helps. Uh. And that's just a tip from us to you if you're a dumb adult, and then go look to kids websites fifth grade about right there. Alright, So here's the deal. Temperatures world Global temperatures depend a lot on the ocean. Uh. Weather period. It depends a

lot on the temperature of the oceans. So if you have a warm ocean, you're gonna have more rain in that area, right Uh. And in the Pacific Ocean near the equator, for the equatorial region where it's warm. Where it's warm, you're gonna have the sun baking that water on the surface, making it warmer, right, and then that the rain that water heats up the air right above it.

That air rises, taking some of the moisture with it, and it rises up meets cooler, drier air in the in the atmosphere, that water vapor condenses and turns into rain. There's your tropical thunderstorm boom. So that's part one, right. And then in the Pacific specifically, there is a patch of warm water that usually gets blown from the Eastern Pacific to the Western Pacific, usually like clockwork. And when that happens, everything is normal. Yes, these are trade winds

and they blow usually pretty consistently, but not always. Sometimes they uh don't blow was heavy, and sometimes they change direction. Yeah, So if the trade wind isn't blowing this warm water, the rotation of the Earth on its axis actually pushes the warm water towards the east rather than towards the west. And when everything is normal and the trade winds blow this warm water to the west, uh, in the wintertime, the rainy season comes to places like East Asia, right, Yeah,

and then western Peru, the Eastern Pacific. It's kind of confusing, so just refer to a map. As we're talking, um is normally dry and cool, right, But if the trade winds aren't there, like you say, to push that warm water along, that warm water stays right where it is off the coast of Peru in the eastern Pacific, and all the weather in the world starts to change. And

this is what's called El Nino. That's right. And el nino isn't It's not something that just affects that one region out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean. It affects climate, well, not climate, but whether all over the world. Uh, in the US, um what you usually see. And we'll talk more about this current El Nino that we're in because we're in one winter, but typically in the US it's gonna bean cooler and wetter weather in the southern part of the United States, warmer weather in

the upper Midwest and Pacific northwest in Alaska. U A fewer hurricanes, more typhoons globally, fewer Atlantic hurricanes, more Pacific typhoons. I think, aren't they one and the same, like a hurricane and a typhoon is just depending on where in the world they are. I don't know, I think so, Yeah, I'm pretty sure. It depends on what you call it. I guess we're gonna find out all right around the world. Um,

in Southeast Asia where it's um warm and dry. In places like Australia, Uh, it's gonna be well warm and dry, right like it can be dangerously dry, yes conditions right, it'll it drier than normal because that that rain, the rainy season isn't being brought over there by the trade winds that yearly Southern Africa warm and dry, Central Africa wetter, and then South America is sort of all over the place, um, depending on where you are, from dry in the northeast

to wet in the west and south. So those are the those are what ELNA will mean when it happens. Usually the thing is um. This happens every two to seven years, supposedly, UM. And it's actually only in fairly recent times, since the early eighties, that science has really sat up and paid attention to this, and it was because they got caught off guard by one UM the But throughout the study over the last like thirty something years, we still don't have any idea what causes the trade

winds to stop. Basically some years that produces el Nino UM. And that's a huge mystery and one that really if we could solve that, we could figure it out, then we could probably predict El Nino even further out, which is, as we'll see, would save lives absolutely. Uh, well, why don't we take a quick break here and we'll come back and um talk a little bit more about the process. All right, So you said every two to seven years, Yes, I did, El Nino comes on stage and takes a bow.

Since we are the Pixies. Seriously, if you haven't seen that Chris Farley bit, just go watch it. It's hilarious. He's got like Carmen Miranda arm bands on and his shirt and it's great. He liked to take his shirt off. Didn't Yeah he did. He got laughs. So it took We were talking about how El Nino um A afect to weather, not just around like eastern Peru or making it drier in Southeast Asia or Australia UM. And the reason that it affects weather around the world is because

of the jet streams. There's a bunch of them and basically the jet streams are where the stratosphere and the troposphere meat. And uh, it's just to put really even like less than fifth grade scientis. They're like rivers of fast moving air in already moving air. It's a jet stream basically up in the atmosphere, and they're basically like

conveyor belts around the world. They moved from west to east, right, and they push things like warm air and cool air and high pressure and low pressure in fronts and all over the world. And when these things encounter other fronts that are already there, they form weather, right or And it's weird to think of weather as the lack of something, but but having say, cool, dry weather, that's still that's still weather. Usually think of weather as an event like

a thunderstorm or tornado or something like that. But weather it can also be unusually dry or unusually cool weather too. Yeah. Weather, it's just however it is right now? Is weather. It's it's very it's very mellow. Uh. And the jet stream, because of its massive power, can affect, uh, like like thousands of miles away, things that you wouldn't think might be affected or affected. Yeah, And so depending on where you are in a jet stream, jet streams are characterized

by um troughs and ridges, right. And if you're underneath a ridge, things usually tend to stay warm and dry, and if you're under a trough, it's usually cold and wet. So, like you said, inn Alnno, the southeastern United States usually sitting right underneath a trough in the jet stream, which means it's colder and mother than usual. Right, Yeah, well that's why because of the jet stream, people blame it on the Alnno, and the Alnno started the whole thing

like this, this weather wouldn't be happening. But the reason that al Nino is distributed throughout the the world is because of the jet stream. So it's this very extraordinarily complex system working in concert with one another to wreak havoc. Yes, for the most part, el Nino. You know, we said every two to seven years is when we get one. And um, climatologists and weather people and meteorologist what else can I call them? Um uh weather bugs, weather bugs.

They look at patterns and you can't just say anytime like oh, things are heating up a little bit, it's al Nino. Their specific conditions, Um, they look in particular and you can say that, but you'll get shouted down,

you know. Meteorologist. Yeah, they love shouting. Um. They look at ocean tibatures, mainly in the Pacific, and when they find a point nine degree fahrenheit or point five degrees celsius right is in the water, and then the conditions start to sort of act like we're talking about before with the wind um, they say, all right, let's take a look at this and start charting at everybody, and

everyone gets real excited in the office. And what they need is five overlapping three month periods for that to be officially classified as Elnno. Otherwise it's just like you said, weather, but it all starts with the sea surface temperature. Um. That's what they call it, staying warmer, being warmer than usual. Yeah. And right now we are officially in the strongest El Nino on record, Yes, at a three point one degree

rise fahrenheit and peak wow. And like El Nino conditions start at point nine degrees yeah, and we're at three point one yeah. And one of the other we'll talk about some of the other big ones, but the one in UH I believe that Chris Farley referenced was that

peaked at two point eight. So this is officially the strongest, although it's not really having the same result as what you would imagine as the strongest, right, so you you would guess and you would probably be um, you wouldn't be shouted at in the meteor meteorological conference if you

guess this. But warmer weather, warmer surface CE Service temperatures should lead to worse weather conditions, drier Indonesia, whether in the southeastern United States, and that's just not happening this time.

Well it is, but not to the degree that they thought it would, right, but not even not even to the degree where, oh this is this is just slightly worse than it was in It's actually not nearly as bad as it was in like even though the ce Service temperature is higher, and they can't explain that either, No, they can't, and they're blaming it on climate change. They're saying it's climate change is definitely doing something what exactly

we don't know. And again, the whole thing dates back to the or the whole study of it dates back to UM nine two eight three season. Right, Yeah, that was when UH meteorology was in its infancy, right, well, not exactly but sort of, because they had an al Nenio year then and they thought, hey, I think what's going on. Is this volcano Mexico l Chon erupted and that's wreaking havoc everywhere. That's gotta be what it is. Yeah, they later were like, oh wait a minute, things are

normal now. It wasn't the volcano, it's what what could it be? Well, the well And the reason that it really got their attention is by the time the al Neno conditions ended, there was like eighty billion dollars worth of damage worldwide, property damage I think um and something like two thousand people had lost their lives. So it really made these meteorologist sit up and take notice. And so agencies like Noah started to drop booi's in the

Pacific Ocean. They started um using weather balloons to study air temperatures in the area and really started tracking the whole thing to see what was going on into to notice any changes. And that's when like El Nino study really started in earnest uh. Yeah. And there's also we should mention La Nina, which is what's known as his sister to El Nino, appropriately titled, and that is when the trade winds actually picked back up and are stronger

than normal. Right, And the fact that it's capitalized suggests that it's the girl christ child, right. I guess maybe El Nino La Nina both capitalized. I don't know, a little odd uh, and each of these phenomenon are about nine to twelve months long, uh, developing the spring. They peeked in the autumn or winter, and then weekend in

the following spring and early summer. So like right now, when this El Nino, when they finally were like, all right, we're getting another El Nino, everyone in southern California, We're was jumping up and down because they're uh in the midst of a long drought, and they thought, we're gonna get tons of rain like we did ninety seven, and it's going to really help fill the coughs. And it just hasn't banned out that way. They got a lot of rain in January, but nothing compared to California really

angered God. When they elected Schwartzeneger, what it was you would pay and chuck um, I think you said La Nina doesn't always follow Al Nino. I don't think so. Well, it doesn't always follow El Nino. It's not guaranteed that when you have El Nino, you're going to have La Nina. But la nin Yeah, it's basically the opposite. The trade winds not only blow the way they're supposed to, they blow even more than ever before. And it's really crazy dry where it's supposed to be. It's really crazy wet

where it's supposed to be wet um. And then there's a period in between, a neutral period where nothing's freaky. That's called regular weather. Right. And if you put all this together El Nino, the neutral period and La nin Ya, you have what's called the El Nino Southern oscillation or and so, which if you are a weather bug or a meteorologist, this is probably how you refer to El Nino as the uh Eleno Southern oscillations. Yes, very nice,

and so do you want to take a break. Let's take a break, Okay, all right, So we talked about some of the effects on local weather in different parts of the world for Elena, but that is uh not the only issue we we talked about. It wreaking havoc. It's not just oh it's raining a lot and it shouldn't be, or oh it's super dry, like devastating effects, billions of dollars and lives loss globally all over the place, so the Chris Farley one, let's just call it the

Farley Alenia. Um, by the time that was over, I think you said earlier thirty three billion dollars in damage. Oh I thought it was like eighty billion. I'm sorry, I I I exaggerated. Maybe it would be eighty billion today. No, I was talking about the early eighties when I said eighty billion. I see now it's eight billion wrong, So please go ahead. There's still a lot of money. So thirty three billion in damage for half a billion in California alone, and uh, it's a you know, a big deal.

If you're an island in the Pacific, you rely on that rain for life, for fresh water, Yeah, wash your hair, sure, all that jazz so food crops they're gonna suffer. Well yeah, I mean drought is really bad for it. But also so it is too much rain too can actually ruin crops um, it's all. It also has a tremendous effect on um like property as well. Oh yeah, I mean if you live on this side of a hill in Los Angeles, you might slide off of that hill and

into the ocean below. Yeah. Where was that one? Um, there's a place in I think in the eighties. Oh yeah, in Peru. There is a place in Peru that normally gets about six inches of rain. Oh yeah, that one. Yeah, And for the nineteen eighty two eighty three El Nino, it got eleven feet. Yeah. You can't normally get how many inches six six inches and go to eleven feet

and not have like serious damage done. Right, And for those of you not in the US or Liberia who weren't just like, wow, normally as place in Prue gets six fifteen centimeters of rain, and they got three meters of rain that year. Now, everybody's duly impressed. Uh. Fisheries are also affected. Um, this is one that I did not know. Anchovies. I love that cold water off the coast of Peru. But when that cold water is not there,

they say, I'm swimming to where it's cold. And so fisheries either scramble to make up for that in other ways, or if they get warning like they get now, they say, hey, why don't we fish for something that likes cold water and shrimp a little baby krill and shrimp shrimp, because you can do a lot of different stuff with shrimp. I don't know if you know this, Oh boy, would you like me to list them off, No, Bubba gump. So uh, it's also affects just the health of individuals.

UM disease carrying rodents and insects, are you know, gonna be more prolific in the wet weather. Malaria UM is going to increase when it's unusually wet and warm, and when it is and usually wet and warm, things like diseases tend to spread a lot more easily. Mosquitoes breed very easily, Yeah, which would account for the malaria right threefold? Right, did you say threefold increase in Not in Peru, there was a threefold increase in malaria because there were just

that many more miss squito's biting people. Yeah, and that's wet conditions. UM in Indonesia had twenty four million acres or seven point seven million hector's, like that of of unchecked forest fires. Yeah, that's that's devastating to the region. Well yeah, and it was because again they're expecting a rainy season and instead they got a drought, and Indonesia in particular got well, it got screwed over by nature. Okay,

I'm just gonna come out and say it. Because they had the warm conditions from uh, the from Southeast Asia pushing into their that area, and then well they're in Southeast Asia. But the majority of Southeast Asia got warmer than usual conditions, and then Australia had drier than usual conditions, and these two conditions pushed together and overlapped and made a Venn diagram, and that the center of the Venn diagram fell directly over Indonesia. So Indonesia was like, we

didn't ellect Schwarzenegger, what's going on? And uh it burned as a matter of fact, Yeah, twenty four million acres. It's unbelievable. Uh, California, Southern California, it's not over for you yet. Uh. They said that there could still be some rough storms into March. But um, you're not going to solve your drought problem, even if it was a strong al neno, you know, or if the strong almenio

led to like like massive amounts of rain. Well supposedly, also when you get a lot of rain to um, it's really dangerous because if you've been through a drought too much at once. Yes, because tree roots during a drought come back up towards the surface because they're trying to get all the water they can. So these trees have shallow roots, so in influx or delusion of water just goes right underneath the trees and they fall over. Yeah,

that happened in Atlanta a few years ago. And I may have even told the story of the guy who got killed in front of my house. Oh yeah, you did. I forgot about that. I mean, thirty ft in front of my house. A tree fell on a guy's truck. Death, I know, And I think about that every time. We have like massive amounts of rain for days and days at a time, and I start to see trees down when I'm driving, I start to look around, you know,

pay attention. Not that there's much you can do. No, I mean maybe if he saw a tree falling, you could jet out of there. But you know, you gotta go the right way. It's true, you know, the tree is a large swath. There was an actress in Chicago. She's on TV. I don't remember what show, but she was riding her biking. A tree fell over and killed her. Tree falling over and killing you randomly is the like your number is up. There's there's how how can you

think of the universe as being that random? It just it almost is like, I know, like fate showing its hand, Like, yeah, you're sitting at a stop fly and the tree falls in your car and kills you, then that's definitely. Or physically moving past the Triana bike and it falls over. The timing is that perfect that it kills you. There was some movie where, uh, some one of those disaster movies where these large towers were falling and you know, people were trying to outrun it by going like north

or the same direction. I can't remember what it was, but I just remember thinking like just go left or right. It's the same things, like don't go into the house. No reason for you to go into the house. It's just it's their movie tropes. I get it. Yeah, Uh, do you have anything else or yeah. So we talked a little bit about climate change, um, affecting al Nino and and like the general consensus is that yes, it

is going to affect al Nino. It's already affecting all Nino, and unsettlingly, it's affecting al Nino in ways that are wildly unpredictable to the current models we have right. Um, and there's this, uh, this blogger on climate dot gov named Tim de Liberto. I'm probably over pronouncing his name a little bit, but he uh hes, he likens um

the end. So to the light in like a dining room is controlled by a dimmer switch, right, And actually, because it's kind of complex, there's a bunch of different dimmer switches, but all of them control this one light that is and so, and he says, climate change is like this brady kid that comes in the room and just starts messing with all the dimmer switches. It's gonna affect the lights, but in all sorts of different ways that are really tough to predict. And he's basically saying,

like we we were. We were caught with our our guard down in nWo, and we did a lot to to make up for that. And now it's so great that we can tell farmers in Peru go plant in dry areas and you're gonna have a great crop this year shrimp, right, which is basically magic. This is what their shaman used to do a couple of thousand years ago. We're now doing right, um, which is pretty cool if you ask me. But um, now we're caught with our guard down again apparently, and we're gonna have to figure

it out. And by we, I mean they and they better hurry up. Yeah, and the prevailing thought that just things beyond unpredictable or just going to be more severe. Yeah, but it's actually that doesn't make any sense because it's less severe this year, even though the service temperature is warmer. He says to me, they don't know. I'll take away from that story is that's my kind of dining room because I love dimmer switches. I love dimmer switches to man.

If something will stand still long enough, I'll put a dimmer switch on it. Yeah. I've got them all over my house because why not have a dimmer switch. I don't know, why just have a dumb switch. It's like I can only be this bright on or off? Take your pick, slim. Yeah, I mean this is two thousand and sixteen, for God's sake. Yeah. So, um, we have an Amazon Echo and I don't know what that is. It's like the thing you talked to. It's the robot that eavesdrops on on you while you're in your house.

Sounds neat um and it can't control lighting yet, but it's like right there, and I can't wait. I can be like turn the living room lights to what's the purpose of this thing? It at its core, it's a wireless Bluetooth speaker that responds to voice commands. Yes, that, so you have a a house robot, as John Hodgment says, yes, that is going to become sentient and kill you and your wife in your sleep probably, but not for a

few decades um. And in the meantime, she's just eaves dropping on us and feeding everything we say to the n s A wow. You know, I did see a thing the other day where I can't remember which brand of TV, but one of them came out and said, hey, you know that new smart TV. UM, it's actually always

listening to you, So watch what you say. Yeah, no, everything that that has the capability well, your phone, like if you look at apps and you're looking at the permission that you give apps on your phone, go check it out. It'll say, yeah, we have access to your microphone, we have access to your video UM, and you're granting them access, which means they can go in any time or all the time and you've drop on what you're saying, or watch you through your camera while you don't think

that it's it's on, Like over my laptop camera at least. Yes, that's smart. But your phone is is very Have you seen Citizen for not yet. Oh, it's been sitting there on my TV. You need to see that. It's very enlightening. For sure. They talk about that because apparently when Snowdon came in the room, he like took everybody's phone, took the batteries out and then put them in like the mini fridge in the in the room. It was like,

now we can talk. Yeah, And he didn't realize he was talking to human cyborgs that we're recording everything with eye cameras. No. Well, actually they had a camera in the room, which is the ironic thing, and he was talking. He knew he was being filmed. He just, I guess, wanted to control the flow of information. Well, if anyone out there wants to hack into my laptop, I will untape it for you and you will be subscribing to the most boring TV show in the world. I thought

you're gonna say, you'll take him on a wild ride. No, Chuck sweeps the floor, Chuck cleans out cat poop and forgets to put in a cat litter. What I think it was on Internet round If we also talked about um there was like a Russian website with nothing but links to like baby cameras and security cameras around the

world's people who have poorly protected cameras. Yeah, because I think the thing with the baby cams is they give you a password out of the box, but you're supposed to change them and if you don't, then it's easily hackable. And they're hackable anyway, dude. I read stories where like a lady went into her kid's bedroom with a camera and heard someone talking back to the kids in Russian. Yeah, it's like yelling at the kids. Every parents worst nightmare.

And that's one reason I don't have a video baby monitor, and that usually Russians yell at babies through baby monitors worse than usual during El Nino seasons. Try to bring in a full circle. If you want to know more about El Nino, type that word into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I said christ Child, it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call it. Well, you know, first, we got a couple of quick corrections. Uh oh, yeah, milk does a body good. It does

skim Milk does not have hyprod dusk corn sort. Yeah, I just got that one wrong. It was off the cuff comment. But I have thought that a long time and I'm trying to think of where I heard it, and I don't remember. I do not remember. It was either like food ink or fed up or some documentary about food or I just confabulated it. Sorry for that one. It happens. Uh, there is some attitud it though, I stand by that. I can't remember what it is. But uh, it's not hfcp uh and A J. Hackett Boy, are

we sorry? New Zealand? Yeah. Uh. The inventor, one of the forebearers of the bungee jump, was definitely not Australian. No, he was a Kiwi. And I've been both places, so I know the difference. Well, and you're the one who said it, so you you, sir, New Zealand. And to make it up, New Zealand, We're gonna come to a show there one day and it's gonna be free. Actually that's not true because we have to actually pay for the trip. But I'd love to do a show there.

Let's do it. If we go to Australia, we gotta go to New Zealand. Man, they kill us if we didn't. Plus, I just want to Yeah, New Zealand beautiful. That's what I've heard, all right, So onto listener mail. Uh, this is just kind of a neat thing. That's what I'm calling it. A neat thing. Hey, guys, one year ago today, I proposed to my now wife, So I guess you said yes using a custom New York Times cusword puzzle. It sounds like something you'd do um and was entitled

It was entitled stuff you should know. I worked on the puzzle with a New York Times puzzle creator uh, and even got the official layout from the New York Times magazine staff. The hotel staff where we were staying that night swapped out the puzzle in our New York Times crossword that was to be delivered the following morning. Twelve to fifteen of the clues were tied to our relationship,

including the title of the puzzle. UH. From the finished puzzle, the phrase I thought it said you will marry me? That would be TV Will you Marry Me? Was spelled out in the bubbles, so creative. My wife, Hannah and I bonded early on through your podcast, and it has remained a wonderful constant in our relationship. So thanks so much for being great and then away being part of one of the best days of my life, the day I've proposed to my wife. That is three exclamation points. Um.

I've attached some of the photos from that day. I looked at it and the guys telling the truth. Yeah, his story checks out. You guys are great. Adam in Chicago. PS. We saw you perform live at the Atheneum Theater here and really enjoyed it. Keep up the good work, guys for exclamation points. So he thinks we're doing a better work than he enjoyed his own engagement. Yeah, and he also said, you guys are great to exclamation points, so

I see where your priorities lay. Adam in Chicago, we got six six exclamation points come by Adam and Hannah. Way to go. I hope you guys stay married forever and listen to us as part of your long lasting flavor agreement legal agreement. Well, put Chuck, we just really deflated that dude's name. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on

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