# Presentation: 472692

***The Writing of El Libro***

## A Writer’s Journey

***A Writer’s Journey***

*©Thomas Nash 2002*

## The Quelccaya Ice Cap

***The Quelccaya Ice Cap***

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

## Why El Niño? 		           the element of surprise

- Surprisingly devastating: 1972-73 El Niño
- Collapse of Peru’s anchoveta industry leads to turmoil in world commodity markets
- Surprisingly surprising: 1982-83 El Niño
- Scientists fail to realize a powerful El Niño is underway until it has almost peaked
-  Surprisingly accurate: 1986 forecast
- Forecasting El Niño is deemed impossible, but Mark Cane & Steve Zebiak do it anyway

## Why El Niño? 		          the element of surprise

- Surprisingly Powerful:  1988-89 La Niña
- Drought & fires in the American West* *
- Surprisingly Unexpected:1990s El Niño(s)
- New teleconnections
*Epic floods on the Mississippi*
*Hantavirus in the American Southwest*
*El Niño & corn harvest in Zimbabwe*
- A rise in intensity and frequency due to greenhouse gases?

## Why El Niño?			the personal element 

- A fascination with violent weather
- Me and hurricanes
- My grandmother and lightning
- My mother and tornadoes
- A feeling of following El Niño around** **
- 1996 Coral reef conference in Panama City
*Rick Fairbanks: El Niño & the monsoon*
*Snorkeling through El Niño-killed corals*
- May 1997 safari in the Okavango Delta
* **El Niño & drought in southern africa*

*The collapse of the trade winds triggered dramatic changes in ocean temperatures & sea surface heights*

***Red******    ******30° C**** *
***Blue******     ******8° C***

- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

***El Niño!***

*A slice through the Pacific*
*	**           **at the Equator*

**Notes:**
FROM WEBPAGE The images show sea surface topography from NASA's TOPEX satellite, sea surface temperature's from NOAA's AVHRR satellite sensor and sea temperature below the surface as measured by NOAA's network of TAO moored buoys. The three dimensional relief map shows a sea level rise along the Equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean of up to 34 centimeters with the red colors indicating an associated change in sea surface temperature of up to 5.4 degrees Celsius. The sea temperature below the surface illustrates how the thermocline (the boundary between warm and cold sea water at 20 degrees Celsius) is flattened out by El Niño.

##  AUGUST 18, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------SCIENCE IS IT EL NINO OF THE CENTURY? SHIFTING OCEAN CURRENTS IN THE PACIFIC COULD TRIGGER DRAMATIC SWINGS IN THE WORLD'S WEATHER BY J. MADELEINE NASH 

- 	Temperatures at the sea's surface have been rising so rapidly that they seem likely to equal those of the notorious El Nino of 1982-83, which left 2,000 people dead and $13 billion in economic losses. "That was the biggest El Nino we know of," says climate modeler Stephen Zebiak of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, "until maybe now."

## Advances in niñology			a regional phenomenon

***Images ©Thomas Nash 2002***

***	******Peru’s coastal desert & fishery***

## Advances in niñology		          a global phenomenon

**Wet**
**Dry**
**Warm**

***summer***

***winter***

## El Niño: a geophysical leviathan 

*NOAAPmel*

*   **in a sea filled with “gentle awful stirrings” *
*	**	**	**	**Herman Melville, ****Moby Dick****** ***

## Sir Gilbert Walker, 1868-1957

-    Walker was the director of the India Meteorological Dept. for many years. He discovered the vast swaying in the atmosphere known as the Southern Oscillation.

*Photo courtesy of Eugene Rasmusson*

## Jacob Bjerknes, 1897-1975

-    One of the meteorological giants of the 20th century, Bjerknes  put the atmosphere and ocean together to form the modern picture of ENSO, the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

***Photo courtesy of Euene Rasmusson***

## 
Pressure 
Darwin,Australia 

Temperature 
Equatorial Pacific 
(Galapagos-Line Islands)

- Pressure
*Darwin,Australia*
- Temperature
*Equatorial Pacific *
*(Galapagos-Line Islands)*

- From Columbia University Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions Website

- http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/dees/ees/climate/slides/ocean_atm_index.html

***ENSO ***

- Niño 3=90°W-150°W and 5°S- 5°N

## Klaus Wyrtki in 1949

-     Wyrtki, now a professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii,  added ocean dynamics to the picture. The ocean warms when water in the equatorial Pacific sloshes from west to east.

## Kelvin & Rossby Waves

- <date/time>

- Based on
- http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/dees/ees/climate/slides/ocean_atm_index.html

***New Guinea***

***Peru***

***Sea Level Higher***

***Sea Level Lower***

- Thermocline
*deep*

***Kelvin & Rossby Waves***

## Sea Level Off the California Coast

- http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/fact-sheet/fs175-99/

## El Niño, La Niña & Normal

***Noaa***

##  Before satellites & computers				hand measurements

*Taking sea surface temperatures  **	**	**      off Paita, Peru*

*Reading traditional barometer **	**       in Darwin, Australia*

***Images  ©Thomas Nash 2002***

## Sea Level, Kelvin Waves & El Niño

***Sea Level, Kelvin Waves ******& El Niño***

***NASA***

## The TAO Array: the ocean in real time

***The TAO Array: the ocean in real time***

***John Kermond, NOAA***

## From the TAO Array

***Dec***
***‘******96***

***Dec***
***‘******97***

***anomaly***

***actual***

***Dec***
***‘******97***

## from satellites      the sea’s surface 		       		  caught in the act

***from satellites  ******    ***the sea’s surface 		       		  caught in the act

***Height***

***Temperature***

***Nasa***

## Forecasting El Niños

-     Current forecast from  the National Centers for Environmental Prediction’s Climate Modeling Branch.
-     It’s a composite of 16 runs of a dynamic climate model pioneered by Ants Leetmaa and Ming Ji starting in the mid 1980s.

## Forecasting Impacts

-     These are CLIMATE forecasts as opposed to weather forecasts.
-     In 1997-98 the forecasts for the U.S. put out by the Center for Climate Prediction were unusually good.
-     The skill of the 2002-2003 forecasts are yet to be determined.

***Center for  Climate  Prediction***

***temp***

***precip***

## Dress rehearsal 		for something bigger?

- 	“Because of the high economic stakes and greater public awareness... the 1997-98 El Nino is shaping up as something more significant than another mighty misfire of the weather machine. It is also a social experiment that will reveal how people around the world react to climate change that is predictable in its broad outlines but unknowable in its details.

- 	{It is] a kind of dress rehearsal for the sort of decision-making we could face in the coming century if, as many...expect, the planet heats up from the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As [one scientist] puts it, "If we don't know how to react to El Nino, how can we react intelligently to something that is far less tangible?”
*	*
*	**August 18, 1997*

## Or the first act	     in a long-running play?

***Or the first act******	******     ******in a long-running play?***

- A double-stranded narrative
- The human struggle to survive nature *in extremis*
- The scientific struggle to understand something almost unimaginably powerful and large
- A double-edged question
- To what extent are we responsible for the calamities that befall us?
- To what extent are we perturbing primal forces that would best be left alone?

## A Litany of Disasters     each with its own natural & social history

- <date/time>

***A Litany of Disasters******     ******each with its own natural & social history***

- Landslides
**Rio Nido, California**
- Peru, Ecuador, Brazil

- Disease Outbreaks
**East Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania)**
- New Mexico
- Malaysia, Singapore

- Out-of-control fires
**East Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo)**
- Florida
- Brazil

- Floods,untimely frosts,crop failures ...

## Landslide

*“**In just a few weeks, the LaCombes’ cozy house had become an alien, even hostile place. The air inside smelled dank; freckles of mold crept up the walls; windows wept with mist.”*

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

***Rio Nido, California***

## El Niño & Rift Valley fever	       flooding near Garissa,Kenya

***C.J. Peters***

## El Niño & Rift Valley fever       mosquitoes, livestock & humans

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

*Tana River, northern Kenya*

## El Niño & Rift Valley fever	             torrential rains in East Africa

*Satellite images show explosive growth of vegetation*

***ndvi***

**Notes:**

NDVI Normalized Difference Vegetation Index

## Kalimantan on fire			up the Mahakam River

***Logging the rainforest, Indonesian Borneo***

***Images ©Thomas Nash 2002***

*** ***

***Kalimantan on Fire***

***Rescued rainforest***
*** ******at Wanariset Samboja***

***ESA***

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

## Fire legacy: orangutan orphans    	  in conflicts with villagers, mothers were killed

***Images ©Thomas Nash 2002***

## El Niño: natural or not?  			A Dayak farmer’s question

*Riyanto Rinco at his father-in-law’s death ceremony: *
*Someone offended the spirits, and that was the cause of the drought and the terrible fires that followed.*

***Images ©Thomas Nash 2002***

## El Niño: natural or not?			the scientists’ question

- The 1990s had been atypically rich in El Niños, noted Kevin Trenberth and Timothy Hoar in an article published by *Geophysical Research Letters*.
*Was “this pattern...a manifestation of global warming and related climate change associated with increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or....a natural decadal time-scale variation”  that had nothing to do with global warming?*
* *

## Advances in Niñology  a forging of larger links

- 1800s The El Niño Current & Peru
- 1920s The Southern Oscillation & India
- 1960s Coupling of Atmosphere & Ocean
- 1970s & 1980s Teleconnections
- 1990s El Niño & global warming???

## The Past as Prologue 		     coral paleoclimatology 

*“**On every side of us swam Sharks innumerable *
*and so voracious that they bit our oars...”*
- 				     James Trevenen, 1777

***Richard Grigg, U.Hawaii***

***NASA***

***Kiritimati Atoll, November 1997***

## The Past as Prologue 	        into the heart of El Niño...

*“**El Niño was ...emerging as a metaphor for what happened when something big and powerful pushed the button that controls the big convection engine ...in the tropical Pacific.”*

***Richard Grigg, U..Hawaii***

*The Moana Wave*

## The Past as Prologue 	tropical ice paleoclimatology

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

*Lonnie Thompson at Quelccaya*

## The Past as Prologue	   tropical ice paleoclimatology

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

*Quelccaya Summit Dome, 18,700’*

## Why climate change matters       collapse of the Tiwanaku culture

***Why climate change matters******       collapse of the Tiwanaku culture***

- .

***Images ©Thomas Nash 2002***

*Lake Titicaca: *
*birthplace of the world*

## Why climate change matters        rise of militarism at Chan Chan

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

## Return to Quelccaya	       August 2000, dawn at 17,000’

***Return to Quelccaya***	       ***August 2000, dawn at 17,000’***

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

## Return to Quelccaya		    the ice cap is shrinking

*In 1974, this boulder was in contact with the ice.*
*Now the ice is 300 meters away, across the lake.*

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

## Return to Quelccaya 		the retreat of Qori Kalis

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

*Henry Brecher surveys the glacier*

## Under the Blue Tarp    	    	glimpses of an uncertain future

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

## Under the Blue Tarp              glimpses of an uncertain future

* **Incan road cuts through pre-Incan terraces*

***©Thomas Nash 2002***

##  El Niño in 2002           a new ocean warming 

***	******	******                    ******NOAA /PMEL***

*... **after the second warmest year on record...*

## A Writer’s Journey, finis

***made it !***

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