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Ocean Science Gets an '80s Power Ballad · Atmosphere with Emily Gracey

• Emily Gracey: Mm-hmm. No, you haven't accidentally stumbled into an eighties rock station. And nope, that's not a lost hit from Journey. It's a song about an ocean wave. Specifically a Kelvin wave. Now unless you're an oceanographer or a meteorologist, there's a pretty good chance you've never heard of one. But these waves play an important role in how our oceans move heat around the planet. And they can even influence weather patterns thousands of miles away. And apparently, they're also excellent material for a power ballad. Came up with the idea to use, you know, kind of an 80s power ballad. In part because I thought it would be interesting, but also I think it kind of fits this process quite well because it's a slow buildup, it's kind of dramatic. Meet Greg Dusek. He's an oceanographer and a coastal scientist who decided to take a little scientific curiosity, add some artificial intelligence, and give ocean physics the full 1980s music video treatment. Big emotions, big music, and some surprisingly real science. That's kind of a preview of what things will look like in the decades to come. And that's important, I think, for people to understand, you know, where we're headed long term. This week on Atmosphere, we're talking ocean waves, artificial intelligence, and what happens when science gets a soundtrack. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie and this is Atmosphere, a podcast where science becomes conversation. Each week I sit down with the experts behind the forecasts, the research, and the headlines to explore not just the science, but the human stories behind it. Through natural curiosity, we're making science more understandable, more relatable, and hopefully bringing a little more comfort in how we experience the world around us. Welcome to Atmosphere on Meteorologist Emily Gracie. First, a quick thank you to our founding sponsor, Weather 100, for supporting independent science storytelling. Weather 100 shows you how your weather ranks against 100 years of weather history. You can learn more through the link in our show notes. My guest today is Dr. Greg Dusik. An oceanographer and coastal scientist who spent years at NOAA studying coastal hazards, sea level changes, and using data and technology to better predict risks along our coastlines. Now he's exploring new ways to communicate that science, including using artificial intelligence to create something I don't think any of us saw coming. An 80s power ballad about a Kelvin wave. And while the song is a lot of fun, the science behind it is pretty serious. Especially when we look at what's potentially ahead this winter. So let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Dr. Greg Dusick. I wanna talk a little bit about where this idea came from to release a an AI generated song about a science phenomenon. Yeah. Well good to see you. It you know, it kind of started well, so I I I follow Ethan Moloch, who's a professor at Wharton School on LinkedIn. He works a lot with kind of the intersection of AI across society, economics. And so he did something where he generated a music video of a of a paper or publication that someone wrote, and I saw it and I was like, wow, that's really cool. And I was thinking about, you know, lately there's been a a significant amount of attention on. The fact that there's a Kelvin wave and really multiple Kelvin waves kind of making their way across the Pacific to the US West Coast. And the way those have been discussed in you know, in kind of interesting terms, I'll say in the media, it made me think I was like, well, people need to understand this a little bit better. and you know, just knowing what's coming probably later this winter, it just seems like an important subject to cover. And I think you know, trying to come up with ways to teach people about, you know, the the physics in an entertaining way. It just seemed like a good idea to to try a music video. and, you know, going into it, I didn't know what to expect. you know, as I kind of went through the process, it came out way better than I could have possibly imagined. and and hopefully it, you know, hopefully people are enjoying it and learning something. Yeah. You have to watch it like several times to kind of take in the information because it's a lot thrown at you at once, but I like the visuals too. All right. So take me through the process and then we're gonna like break it down line by line, if that's okay, and talk about what each line really means. But I want to hear about how you went about creating like such a quality song. And it's it's not a real person, right? It sounds like it. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it started with a discussion with Claude. So, you know, that's my LLM of of choice, and kind of sketched out, you know, I was like, I have this idea, here's what I want to do. Can you sketch out how we would go about? You know, this process. You know, that's one thing Claude's really good at and a lot of the the AI agents are good at now is kind of walking you through kind of a planning process of how you might create something. And so it kind of suggested the steps and then we iterated a little bit back and forth in terms of, you know, here's what I would like to include, like importantly, real data. So I think that's one way you can use AI for for I think quality communications ideas is make sure you're using real data and that you that you're involved in that process of assessing that data and using the right data. And so in this case we use NOAA data from the San Diego Tide Gauge and then information from NOAA in terms of El Nino, the El Nino index and and and things like that. And so pulled that data, provided it, and kind of scoped out what the story would be. And then Claw generated the lyrics because Lord knows I could not write good song lyrics. So it wasn't something that I should be doing. And so then once you had the lyrics, then you use a different AI called Suno. Which is the way you create the musical track. And so I had never done that before. So it was a new to me. But it's a really interesting tool, gives you a lot of options for how you might create your song. And I came up with the idea to use, you know, kind of an 80s power ballad in part because I thought it would be interesting, but also I think it kind of fits this process quite well because it's kind of slow, it's a slow buildup. It's kind of dramatic. You know, it's something that's sustained over time and has a history to it. and I thought that that musical choice would fit it well. and then after that's generated, then you go back to Claude and Claude actually is the one that generated all the the scenes. so those are all generated through code, which is pretty crazy and using the real data. And then you stitch it all together and you end up with a a music video. Wow. Okay. Start to finish, how long did it take? Like half a day, maybe. Wow. And if I was gonna just do that myself, you know. It would take weeks and it wouldn't sound that good. So yeah, I think it just shows you like how much more efficient some of the you know, AI tools can help you be much more efficient and be more creative, you know, and deliver high quality visuals that otherwise you would just wouldn't be possible. Yeah. I'm wondering, do you have have you had any like musician feedback on it? And how do they feel? Because, you know, it's kind of their livelihood here. being done in half a day. No, I have not. But I think that's one of the things to weigh with all of this, right? Like when you're producing something, you know, there's value to the human element, I think. And and you lose that a little bit with AI. and so I think for me it's more of a, you know, would I want to use AI to build a the the next album I would listen to? I don't know. Maybe not. I'd rather have a human singing to me, I think. But like enable to enable kind of creative exploration, I think it I think that's one of the benefits is not necessarily replacing what we get out of of people's artistic abilities, but rather enabling scientists who aren't artists at all to deliver something that can be communicated well and and then hopefully people can learn from it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I wonder I I'm thinking about like the opposite though, too, and how we feel when non-scientists use AI to generate content and poses so it's it's an interesting discussion. Let's talk about the science behind this. And simply put, you said you've seen some stuff out there where like maybe Kelvin waves aren't being like communicated properly. Can you give us a basics here on what a Kelvin wave is? So, first off, it's a very slow moving wave. And I think that's important for people to realize. And it it's very large, right? So what it what it effectively is in this case is that, you know, you normally have your trade winds blowing across the Pacific from east to west. And that Pushes water, piles it up in the the western Pacific, and it's warm surface water of the ocean. And so most of the time, under normal conditions, that water kind of holds there. And then that's why, you know, if you're on the the Pacific West Coast, you'll notice that the ocean tends to be pretty cold. So that changes the water temperature, also changes the elevation of the water. And so, you know, you're kind of pushing the ocean to the west. And so your water levels near the coast are a little bit lower on the the US coastline, a little bit higher. in the the western pacific. when you get into an ENSO situation or El Niño situation, you relax those trade winds. The atmospherics change such that, you know, it's kind of a feedback cycle, but the trade winds relax. And so that water then starts moving back west. and that process or back east, sorry. and so that process of moving the water moving back towards the the the North American coastline, Central American, North American coastline. It propagates as a Kelvin wave. And so it moves at about six, five, six miles per hour. So think about like a fast walk, maybe. And so it takes, it actually takes a couple months to get across the Pacific Ocean. And so really it's just kind of an L an elevated water level of, you know, inches to maybe a foot. it makes its way back, it's around Ecuador, and then that energy has to go somewhere. So it splits up, it starts going north and south to North America and South America, respectively, because of the the The Earth's rotation, that water hugs the coast and kind of propagates up and impacting the coastline as a wave kind of along the coast. So that's kind of just how the Kelvin wave works. I think one other way that this can be helpful to think about is that the tides, so you know, that everyone's familiar with the ocean tides, which kind of rise and fall typically twice a day, right? And people are used to that. It's kind of a slow rise and fall of water. Those are actually very fast moving Kelvin waves. So those are very similar in terms of how they propagate, but they actually move a lot faster than this, right? Because they're rotating where you hit a high tide, you know, every every 12 hours or so. The Kelvin wave is moving on the order of, you know, months instead of hours. But it's that kind of concept of like a slow rise and fall of water, not like a wave that you see breaking at the beach that, you know, and I think that's what that's where I think I think people get confused is that people think of waves as this thing that, you know, breaks on the shore, and that's not what this is. Or even like a tsunami, I could see the the confusion there. What is normal weather? Between dramatic headlines, record this, extreme that, and hundreds of weather apps all showing you basically the same information, it can be surprisingly hard to tell what's actually unusual. That's where Weather 100 comes in. Weather 100 is a minimalist desktop weather display that compares your local weather with the last 100 years of history, showing you how unusual it really is. 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Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so that was like, you know, Peruvian fishermen. historically that's where the El Nino name came from, is that they realized that these warm waters appeared kind of around Christmas time. And and that was not my line. I give Claude full credit for coming up with that one. Yeah. Did you have to adjust some of these lines? not much. For accuracy. Really? Yeah. No, yeah. It I it was it was very well done. Yes. I didn't have to make many tweaks at all. Yeah. And for people who don't know you, like I feel like the last interview I did with you, you're not new to use of AI. Like this has been kind of your bread and butter as well in your career, decades-long career with NOAA, you've used AL AI a lot in ocean work, right? For sure. Yeah. And not just, I think important for people to realize that I think when when now it's become AI means a large language model like Claude, like ChatGPT, like others. That is one type of AI. But AI has also what we call just machine learning, which is basically training models to predict things using data. And it's not necessarily a thing you talk to, but it can help you predict, you know, ocean conditions, hazards and things like that. And so that work in particular, that type of AI, is something I've worked on for a long time and and I think can be super helpful to to understand risks that people face along the coastlines and and elsewhere. Here comes the Kelvin wave rolling up the coast to me. Every tide's a little higher when you're warming up the sea. I think the important point there is that it's you know, it's increasing water temperatures as well. And so when you have warmer water, water expands and so that leads to higher water levels. in addition to the Kelvin wave itself, the temperature plays a role as well. Yeah, there's been a lot of talk this year about El Nimo, like a lot of talk about the impact on hurricane season and both Pacific and Atlantic. But is the bigger story here the winter? I mean, yeah, I we'll see. I think there's a a a good chance that that is the case. Yeah. Both from, you know, these increasing water temperatures causing higher sea levels, but then also the change in storms, which we which is referenced in the song as well, is that. You know, you tend to get increased storm activity at lower latitudes. And so like places like Southern California are likely to see an increase in storminess. And then you also have warmer ocean water, which then enables more rain. So it's kind of a compounding factors of things. And and I certainly think there's, you know, a likelihood of of some significant events coming this winter for sure. The jet stream bent to find you and it sent the winter storms. Basically the atmospherics change such that what's called the Aleutian Low, which is a low pressure system that's typically at higher latitude, starts shifting southward. And that kind of modifies your jet stream and modifies your storm propagation, and you end up seeing increased storminess. And that actually can also affect, interestingly enough, that same impact can affect the Gulf Coast and the East Coast as well. And so In terms of seeing increased winter storms causing coastal flooding. We think of El Niño mostly as a west coast phenomenon, but that factor in particular can also cause impacts on the Gulf and East Coast too. Okay. all right. Well, right before the bridge you start to get into some impacts here. The then the king tide met the big surf and the water found the street. That's the coastal flooding, right? Yeah. Yeah. And and I think again the the king tide part is important, right? So you have this mean change in water levels, which which raises your floor, but it's not that's not necessarily what causes flooding. It's what's on top of that floor. You tend to get king tides on the west coast in November, December, January. And so when you get those really high astronomical tides on top of an elevated water level and then throw in some waves, that's when you really start seeing these these flood days. Water can be hard to understand for like the layman, you know, like just how flooding happens and how there's all these different types and what's causing it. It's very confusing. Alright, and at the beach I used to walk on washed away beneath my feet. Got a little erosion happening in here. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Increased wave activity during El Nino Years. You definitely sent tend to see an increase in erosion along the Pacific coast. 83, 98, you took All right, and then you hit some historical events here, right? Eighty three, you took the piers. So yeah, eighty three was over the last you know, the recent pass was the largest El Nino event we had. And there was actually significant pier damage along the California coastline from those events. In ninety eight you took the cliffs. That was another large event, not quite as large as eighty eight or eighty three, but there was significant cliff failures and cliff erosion along the California coastline. And then you took the sand in twenty sixteen. Yeah, fifteen and sixteen. yes. so there was significant amounts of beach erosion in particular during that cycle. So those were the kind of the three large El Nino events that we've had over the last, you know, fifty years or so. And interestingly enough, I think the importance of that is it it paints a some good examples for what we are going to experience this year as kind of parallels and kind of how do we line up to those historic events, which gives us some context to know what to expect. And then there's like a little zinger here at the end and every time you come back the C's already higher than before. Is getting worse. Yeah. So sea level rise. which, you know, along the West Coast is not as has not been as significant as along like places in the Gulf and East Coast. But, you know, since that '83 El Nino, you're talking, you know, forty years of sea level rise, which means like, you know, maybe three or four inches of additional sea level in like San Diego, which doesn't sound like much, but three or four inches makes a big difference. And and you go from, you know, a few flood days to more like a dozen or something. So Wow. Okay. So I mean, this is really fun and and cute, but also like this is kind of a weighty topic when you're talking about these impacts. so what like what can we expect this winter? I know that the governor of California put out like a you know, a state of emergency. W what are we looking at? What can we expect? it's Extremely likely there will be some amount of flooding. And there's a high probability there will be record-breaking water levels. The expectation from NOAA is like I think a 75% likelihood that it'll be as high or higher than the 83 event that I mentioned, you know, in terms of just the the sea level temperatures, the ocean temperatures. And so along with that, we know that water levels will probably be at least similar to that. But coupled on top of that. I you know, we've had sea level rise. And then we're also ex you know, we're also going to see a very significant king tide event. So it's it's working out that the tides have aligned to set up some of the highest tides we've seen over the last few years on the West Coast in November and December, which and it happens to be during the holiday weeks. So the week of Thanksgiving, the week of Christmas, the tides are gonna be as bad as high as you can get on the West Coast. And so again, raising that floor with El Nino, then setting up really, really high tides and then potential for increased storminess. And that's just a recipe for disaster. and so, you know, I I think preparing for that as best we can is gonna be really important. and and you know, I will add that I have a couple colleagues, Thomas Moynihan, Chris Pie Cooch, and Ivan Haig, who are fantastic sea level scientists. They just put out a paper trying to look at this and say, what are we likely to expect from? this next event from like extreme. So from major flooding events, moderate to major flooding events. And and by adding up those components they project for the West Coast, it's over five times as likely as normal to have kind of major flooding events in the West Coast. So things aren't looking great for this winter for sure. Is there a timing on this? Like how long before the Kelvin wave gets here? Yeah. So the initial wave is actually already hitting the Southern California right now. Sea levels in San Diego, I just checked today, are well over a foot above normal right now. and actually they're experiencing they crossed the flood threshold for a bunch of the South Southern California NOAA gauges exceeded the flood threshold today. So there's probably some flooding happening in Southern California today. and and it's not that high of a tide. So today's tide is about a half a foot over kind of a normal high tide. compare that to what we expect in November, where it's gonna be more like a foot and a half above a normal high tide. So yeah, we're we're we're already experiencing the impacts now and and they're likely to continue and and and exacerbate over the next few months. Well, like any good eighties ballad, I feel like this is a little desperate at the end and kind of sad and heartbreaking. You don't have to come back stronger when the sea keeps rising too. Did you prompt it with like, let's leave it with kind of this like really heavy thought, or was that something it just came up with on its own? One thing I wanted to include, that I asked to include was this idea that this El Nino is really a kind of like experiencing sea level rise right now. and so, you know, basically the amount of sea level that we're gaining from this El Nino is the same as what we're expected to see in about 30 or 40 years of sea level rise. So it's kind of a preview. of what things will look like in the decades to come. And that's important, I think, for people to understand, you know, where we're headed long term. yeah, this is bad now, but it's also telling us what will be normal in, you know, in a few decades. As far as this particular song, what what are you hoping for it? Who who do you want to see it? Where do you want it to go? What are your hopes for it? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think, you know, I've talked to some people who were wanted to ask me to share with them so they could use it in their class, right? For to to show it to their students. I I don't know, that kind of thing. I think just people being able to use it to educate and you know clear some of the misconceptions that folks might have and and hopefully spur impact for this event. And then also just be aware of what this might look like long term. So that hopefully we can start taking you know, taking steps to mitigate the consequences of long term sea level rise. So yeah, I think if it can do that, if it's if it can educate a few people, then it's I think time time well spent. Big thanks to Dr. Greg Dusick for joining me on Atmosphere, who knew a song about Kelvin waves could teach us so much about El Niño, coastal flooding, and rising seas. I hope you'll check out Greg's full music video. I've linked it in the show notes. If today's episode sparked any questions or you just want to talk weather, you can find me on Facebook, I'm Emily Gracie Meteorologist, or on Instagram, Atmosphere Podcast. I'm also over on Substack where I share more of the stories, science, and conversations behind each episode. And if you're enjoying Atmosphere, please take a moment to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Readings, reviews, and sharing the show with a fellow science lover all help more people discover what we're doing here. Atmosphere is a production of Mike Burst. It's produced, edited, and hosted by me, Emily Gracie. Thanks for taking the time to slow down, stay curious, and explore the atmosphere.