#80: El Niño (ENSO) and Ocean Temperatures

Sep 25, 2023

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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

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

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