jet stream

Have you heard of El Niño? Some people call it the single biggest influence on winter weather in North America. But what is it, and how does it work? And we're in an El Niño event this year, and it's going to affect our weather (and ecology!)

There is always much confusion about El Niño, what it is, why it occurs, and how it might alter our weather in the coming seasons.

Today's episode looks at El Niño, which is one part of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. Consider this a primer - an accessible look at some of the mechanisms and impacts of El Niño, and how and why it can impact weather from India to California and beyond. And we also include a few ecological tidbits here and there.

In order to give El Niño its due, we also cover some of the basics of how oceans influence weather.

I tried hard to pack a lot of information into 50 minutes, along with a lot of analogies to help reinforce some of the points. Let me know how I did! And of course, these are very complex systems, so there is much that I couldn't cover.

Looking ahead, we will have an expert climatologist later this year, so this episode will serve as good background for some of that conversation. I also have interviews with a dendrochronologist (tree ring expert!), a wildfire episode with an ex-firefighter, and an episode on nocturnal animals. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite app to ensure you don't miss future releases.

FULL SHOW NOTES

Links To Topics Discussed

Daniel Swain - Weather West, YouTube Office Hours

Jet Steam Basics

Jet Stream Alignment in ENSO Scenarios

National Weather Service CPC ENSO Report (PDF)

Rossby Waves

Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://brianholtzmusic.com

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Get inspired with the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature podcast we all need.

Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests such as Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Gabe Brown. And topics ranging from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats! 

A popular superstition linking this Anglo Saxon Bishop and the weather has proved remarkably resilient. We investigate it in todays podcast as we remember Swithins death on July 2, 863

We’ve gotten requests to talk about the balloon bombs that Japan used to target North America during World War II. But these were not the only balloons in use during the war, or the first balloons used for military purposes.

Research:

• Barnett, Glenn. “Another Way to Bomb Germany.” Warfare History Network. June 2021. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/another-way-to-bomb-germany/
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "airship". Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 Feb. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/technology/airship. Accessed 15 February 2023.
• Czekanski, Tom. “Museum Acquires Item Related to the First African American Unit in Normandy.” National World War II Museum. 2/1/2020. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/museum-acquires-item-related-first-african-american-unit-normandy
• Drapeau, Raoul E. “Operation Outward: Britain’s World War II offensive balloons.” IEEE Power and Energy Magazine. September/October 2011. https://site.ieee.org/ny-monitor/files/2011/09/OPERATION-OUTWARD.pdf
• Juillerat, Lee. “Balloon Bombs.” Oregon Encyclopedia. https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/balloon_bombs/#.Y-6VRHbMJPa
• Knight, Judson. "Balloon Reconnaissance, History." Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security, edited by K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, vol. 1, Gale, 2004, pp. 91-94. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3403300069/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=3191fc84. Accessed 15 Feb. 2023.
• Lienhard, John H. “No. 2192: Franklin and Balloons.” Engines Of Our Ingenuity. https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2192.htm
• Maskel, Rebecca. “Why Was the Discovery of the Jet Stream Mostly Ignored?” Smithsonian. 4/2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/as-next-may-unbelievablebuttrue-180968355/
• Mikesh, Robert C. “Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America.” Smithsonian Annals of Flight. No. 9. 1973. https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/18679/SAoF-0009-Lo_res.pdf
• National Archives. “Barrage Balloons - the nation's defender.” https://www.findmypast.com/1939register/barrage-balloons
• “The First Air Raid Happened When Austria Dropped Bombs on Venice from Pilotless Hot-Air Balloons (1849).” 9/7/2021. https://www.openculture.com/2021/09/the-first-air-raid-in-history.html
• Paone, Thomas. “Protecting the Beaches with Balloons: D-Day and the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion.” National Air and Space Museum. 6/4/2019. https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/protecting-beaches-balloons-d-day-and-320th-barrage-balloon-battalion
• Paone, Thomas. “The Most Fashionable Balloon of the Civil War.” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. 11/5/2013. https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/most-fashionable-balloon-civil-war
• Rogers, J. David. “How Geologists Unraveled the Mystery of Japanese Vengeance Balloon Bombs in World War II.” https://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/forensic_geology/Japenese%20vengenance%20bombs%20new.htm
• Royal Air Forces Association. “Barrage Balloons in the Second World War.” 10/13/2020. https://rafa.org.uk/blog/2020/10/13/barrage-balloons-in-the-second-world-war/
• Royal Meteorological Society. “Jetstreams.” 8/22/2013. https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/jetstreams
• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “Presidential Writings Reveal Early Interest in Ballooning.” 2/15/2016. https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/presidential-writings-reveal-early-interest-ballooning
• Uenuma, Francine. “In 1945, a Japanese Balloon Bomb Killed Six Americans, Five of Them Children, in Oregon.” Smithsonian. 5/22/2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon-bomb-killed-six-americansfive-them-children-oregon-180972259/
• Ziegler, Charles A. “Weapons Development in Context: The Case of the World War I Balloon Bomber.” Technology and Culture , Oct., 1994, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1994). http://www.jstor.com/stable/3106505.

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Ce grand courant océanique avance en moyenne à 6 km/h. Mais depuis plus de 1000 ans, il semble qu’il tourne au ralenti. C’est ce qu’indique une récente étude publiée dans Nature Geoscience. Qu’est-ce qui explique ce ralentissement? Et quelles en sont les conséquences? Avec Baptiste Zapirain et Charles Trahan

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Why the GMC approach to characterization doesn't work for me, what does, and other thoughts on showing flaws in characters. Also how much I loved Melissa Marr's THE WICKED AND THE DEAD.

First Cup of Coffee is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at Frolic.media/podcasts!

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Thanks for listening!

This week on The Elucidators: Decoding Global News, we’re going to discuss a big, symbolic diplomatic move that occurred in the Middle East last week: the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, two countries that have been in a formal state of hostilities for decades. 

In one of the few successes the Trump Administration can claim for its foreign policy, it looks like the Arabs and Israelis may be putting aside their longstanding enmity to confront the nascent Iranian threat. 

We’re also going to delve into the situation in Belarus, which might just be on the brink of a democratic “color revolution” after a fixed election, and we’ll also talk about how an Arctic heat wave is causing scientists to bump up their timelines for climate change — and not in a good way. 

Episode Photo by Sander Crombach on Unsplash

Further Reading:

1. Bahrain, Sudan May Follow UAE In Making Peace With Israel, Minister Says
2. “We Were Locked Up in One Country and Released Into Another”: Horror and Hope as Protests in Belarus Continue — The New Yorker
3. The First Arctic Summer Without Ice Is Coming in Just 15 Years

Also, follow and like us on the social medias, or drop us a question via email!

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• https://twitter.com/The_Elucidators

Discover how to communicate climate change from host and astrobiologist David Grinspoon, a.k.a. Dr. FunkySpoon, comic co-host Chuck Nice, and science communicator and NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel.

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Image Credit: NASA.