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Transcript

What Will El Niño Bring Us? · Simmer Down

• 0:02
  Jeff Berardelli: In El Nino, you should expect the unexpected, and that's what we're gonna see things that we've never seen before, unprecedented things.
• 0:11
  Kathleen Biggins: Welcome to Simmer Down, where we take a cool-headed look at a hot topic: climate change.
• 0:17
  Kathleen Biggins: Today we're taking a look at El Nino.
• 0:20
  Kathleen Biggins: It's not exactly climate change, but as you will see, they are related.
• 0:26
  Kathleen Biggins: We're hearing a lot of dire sounding forecasts around El Nino, even that it's going to be a super El Nino.
• 0:34
  Kathleen Biggins: We probably know that's a recurring weather phenomenon, but this one sounds bigger and badder than anyone we've heard of before.
• 0:44
  Kathleen Biggins: And there's so much information coming at us, we're not sure what is real and what is hype.
• 0:49
  Kathleen Biggins: And so we've invited our meteorologist and climate expert, Jeff Berardelli, to help us understand what's happening and to learn what to expect in the coming months.
• 1:01
  Kathleen Biggins: Jeff is the chief meteorologist and climate specialist and the lead of MAC's Defender 8 weather team.
• 1:08
  Kathleen Biggins: He has been obsessed with weather since age three.
• 1:11
  Kathleen Biggins: After witnessing the recent spike in extreme weather, he went back to school to study climate and earned a master's degree in climate and society from Columbia University.
• 1:22
  Kathleen Biggins: Welcome, Jeff.
• 1:24
  Jeff Berardelli: Glad to be here, Kathleen.
• 1:26
  Kathleen Biggins: Okay, before we jump into it, what does the leader of Max Defender 8 weather team do?
• 1:31
  Kathleen Biggins: It sounds like something out of an Avengers movie.
• 1:35
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, I'm uh the chief meteorologist of my TV station and my weather department.
• 1:40
  Jeff Berardelli: Um in addition to that, I I also am the climate specialist from the weather department as well.
• 1:46
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh Max Defender 8 is just the name of our weather team, but it's also the name of our radar.
• 1:51
  Jeff Berardelli: We have a very powerful radar, one of the most powerful radars in the country for monitoring thunderstorms and tornadoes and such.
• 1:58
  Jeff Berardelli: And so it's just essentially our brand.
• 2:00
  Kathleen Biggins: And you're down in Tampa, Florida, where weather gets fierce.
• 2:04
  Kathleen Biggins: So you need a big radar.
• 2:06
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, that's actually true.
• 2:08
  Jeff Berardelli: And radar is very important because the National Weather Service radar uh goes around in a circle several times.
• 2:14
  Jeff Berardelli: It only sends you data once every few minutes.
• 2:17
  Jeff Berardelli: But few minutes is the difference between life and death when it comes to tornadoes.
• 2:21
  Jeff Berardelli: So having your own radar at your TV station helps to get that information much faster.
• 2:26
  Kathleen Biggins: So let's jump into the basics because I really do think a lot of people think they know what El Nino might be, but aren't sure that they do.
• 2:35
  Kathleen Biggins: So could you give us a really succinct definition of what El Nino is?
• 2:41
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah.
• 2:42
  Jeff Berardelli: The most simple example is that it's just warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
• 2:48
  Jeff Berardelli: We have La Nino, which is a cooling in the eastern Pacific, and in El Nino, which is a warming in the eastern Pacific equatorial region.
• 2:55
  Jeff Berardelli: And it's a cycle.
• 2:56
  Jeff Berardelli: It happens every couple to few years.
• 2:58
  Jeff Berardelli: We go back and forth between those two events.
• 3:01
  Kathleen Biggins: That sounds so benign.
• 3:02
  Kathleen Biggins: It sounds like it's just something that normally happens.
• 3:05
  Kathleen Biggins: It happens sometimes over there, it's happened sometimes in the Atlantic.
• 3:08
  Kathleen Biggins: And yet this time it's getting all of this hype about disasters.
• 3:13
  Kathleen Biggins: It's being called super.
• 3:14
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, there's a lot of fear around what's coming.
• 3:18
  Kathleen Biggins: So can you tell us why this one is different and why it's so severe this year versus in the past?
• 3:26
  Jeff Berardelli: So this is a natural cycle.
• 3:27
  Jeff Berardelli: This one's much stronger than any we have seen in the past.
• 3:31
  Jeff Berardelli: It's forecast to get to four degrees Celsius, the anomaly.
• 3:34
  Jeff Berardelli: So that is the departure from normal of temperatures in the eastern Pacific.
• 3:38
  Jeff Berardelli: The average of one particular region is forecast to get to four Celsius.
• 3:42
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, the highest that we've ever seen is 2.8 degrees Celsius.
• 3:46
  Jeff Berardelli: And the second highest is 2.7 degrees Celsius.
• 3:50
  Kathleen Biggins: Okay, so it's hotter.
• 3:51
  Jeff Berardelli: Much hotter.
• 3:52
  Kathleen Biggins: Which would make sense because the oceans are hotter due to climate change.
• 3:55
  Kathleen Biggins: So is that why it's hotter, or is there another reason for it?
• 3:59
  Jeff Berardelli: That's part of the reason, but we don't know exactly to what degree we will need to study that some of that uh is likely to be due to climate change, due to man-made climate change and carbon pollution and greenhouse warming.
• 4:13
  Kathleen Biggins: It sounds like it's kind of putting the climate change impacts on steroids.
• 4:17
  Kathleen Biggins: It's just making a lot of what was normally happening with climate change much more severe.
• 4:22
  Kathleen Biggins: Is that a fair statement?
• 4:24
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, or I would actually flip that around and say climate change is putting El Nino on steroids.
• 4:29
  Kathleen Biggins: Okay.
• 4:30
  Kathleen Biggins: So El Nino would be happening anyway, but now because of the climate, it's where the climate is actually making it much stronger.
• 4:36
  Jeff Berardelli: There is a significant amount of excess heat that's been building up in the Western Pacific warm pool under the surface.
• 4:43
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, a lot of that is due to greenhouse warming.
• 4:46
  Jeff Berardelli: This El Nino, this natural cycle, is taking advantage of the extra heat that's been piling into our oceans.
• 4:53
  Jeff Berardelli: The baseline warmth in the ocean is higher.
• 4:57
  Jeff Berardelli: The excess heat in the warm pool is higher, and all that subsurface heat is now riding into the eastern Pacific, rising up to the surface.
• 5:06
  Jeff Berardelli: And that's how we start to experience it.
• 5:08
  Jeff Berardelli: It's when it's taken from the subsurface to the surface and then released out into the atmosphere, and then it begins to kind of manifest and impact global uh climate and weather systems, you know, around the world.
• 5:21
  Kathleen Biggins: That sounds to me like fertile ground for hurricanes, because that's kind of nature's way of releasing the heat of the oceans into the atmosphere.
• 5:30
  Kathleen Biggins: What other types of weather patterns release that heat as well?
• 5:35
  Kathleen Biggins: What else are we seeing change because that heat is being forced up into the atmosphere from the ocean?
• 5:42
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, extra heat released into the atmosphere is going to cause heat waves to be even worse than they would otherwise be.
• 5:47
  Jeff Berardelli: Everything is connected in the atmosphere in the oceans.
• 5:50
  Jeff Berardelli: If one thing happens in one place, just like the butterfly effect, it is going to happen and have an impact somewhere else in the world as well.
• 5:57
  Jeff Berardelli: So heat waves is one.
• 5:59
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, another example are floods.
• 6:01
  Jeff Berardelli: The more heat you have in the atmosphere, the more moisture you have in the atmosphere, and the more likely you are to have bigger floods.
• 6:08
  Jeff Berardelli: It also changes weather patterns, such that areas that might be more typically dry this time of year get wet.
• 6:13
  Jeff Berardelli: And in addition, on top of that, likely some severe weather outbreaks, which is something that we don't want, but does come along with strong El Nino's.
• 6:21
  Jeff Berardelli: We saw it in 1997-98.
• 6:23
  Jeff Berardelli: 98 was the worst tornado outbreak in Florida history, and that was a super El Nino.
• 6:29
  Kathleen Biggins: Okay.
• 6:29
  Kathleen Biggins: So when you say severe weather, you're really talking tornadoes.
• 6:33
  Jeff Berardelli: Tornadoes, severe, severe thunderstorms, and significant flooding from thunderstorms.
• 6:38
  Kathleen Biggins: Let's go through region by region, kind of what we can anticipate this winter.
• 6:43
  Kathleen Biggins: And also let me ask you how long we think El Nino will be impacting our lives.
• 6:49
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, first of all, El Nino has not peaked yet.
• 6:51
  Jeff Berardelli: We're at about 3.5 degrees Celsius of warming in the equatorial eastern Pacific.
• 6:56
  Jeff Berardelli: We will see that number probably jump close to four degrees Celsius by December.
• 7:01
  Jeff Berardelli: That will be the peak.
• 7:02
  Jeff Berardelli: How do we know that?
• 7:02
  Jeff Berardelli: Our computer model median average of all the computer models is four degrees Celsius, maybe slightly more, maybe slightly less.
• 7:09
  Jeff Berardelli: So the peak El Nino is in December.
• 7:11
  Jeff Berardelli: But remember, that's the peak of the water temperatures warming in the eastern Pacific.
• 7:16
  Jeff Berardelli: The peak of the impacts happens after that.
• 7:18
  Jeff Berardelli: There's a lag between the buildup of heat in the ocean and the impacts that we see in the atmosphere.
• 7:23
  Jeff Berardelli: So the worst impacts will probably be just slightly after that, as we head into January and February.
• 7:29
  Jeff Berardelli: And those impacts are going to lag and probably be around straight through the end of spring.
• 7:34
  Jeff Berardelli: It will be the end of spring and the beginning of summer when we no longer really experience the impacts of El Nino anymore.
• 7:40
  Kathleen Biggins: So what can the East Coast anticipate?
• 7:43
  Jeff Berardelli: That's a good question.
• 7:44
  Jeff Berardelli: Depends on where you are on the East Coast.
• 7:46
  Jeff Berardelli: It should be wetter than normal up and down the eastern seaboard.
• 7:49
  Jeff Berardelli: It will be warmer than normal in New England, the northeast, and the Middle Atlantic.
• 7:53
  Jeff Berardelli: It's more likely that there will be rainstorms than snowstorms there.
• 7:57
  Jeff Berardelli: Now, as far as the southern part of the Atlantic coast, uh Florida, severe weather, a lot of extra rain.
• 8:05
  Jeff Berardelli: Probably I'd say double, maybe triple the amount of normal rainfall along the deep south Gulf Coast and in Florida as well.
• 8:13
  Jeff Berardelli: So expect a warmer than normal winter across the northeast.
• 8:17
  Jeff Berardelli: And because of the warmer than normal winter across the northeast, it's going to be harder to get snow along the coast.
• 8:23
  Jeff Berardelli: Inland areas will probably see a mix of ice and snow, but I would not think it's going to be a great uh snow skiing season in the Northeast.
• 8:32
  Kathleen Biggins: Okay, how about the Midwest?
• 8:33
  Kathleen Biggins: What can they expect?
• 8:35
  Jeff Berardelli: The Midwest is tougher because the impacts are a little less clear.
• 8:38
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, I would say that it'll probably be warmer than normal in the Great Lakes as well.
• 8:43
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, and then things kind of even out once you get in the middle of the country.
• 8:46
  Jeff Berardelli: It's unclear.
• 8:47
  Jeff Berardelli: It could be warm, it could be cool.
• 8:48
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, I think the further north you go, the more likely it is to be warmer than average.
• 8:52
  Jeff Berardelli: The further south you go, the more likely it is to be cooler than average.
• 8:56
  Jeff Berardelli: And the reason is we're gonna see an invigorated subtropical jet stream.
• 8:59
  Jeff Berardelli: That subtropical jet's gonna affect California, the deep southwest, Texas, the Gulf Coast, Florida, up and down the eastern seaboard.
• 9:06
  Jeff Berardelli: It bypasses anywhere north of the plain states.
• 9:09
  Jeff Berardelli: So anywhere then that's under that subtropical jet is cloudy more often, it's rainy more often, it's cooler just because of that.
• 9:14
  Jeff Berardelli: But then north of that, there isn't a huge impact.
• 9:17
  Jeff Berardelli: Once you get towards the Canadian border, uh up in the northern tier, the Great Lakes, it's warmer than average because it's likely gonna be extremely warm in the eastern part of Canada due to blocking.
• 9:27
  Jeff Berardelli: There's probably gonna be a significant amount of blocking.
• 9:29
  Jeff Berardelli: We see that in our computer later.
• 9:31
  Kathleen Biggins: Okay, what's the blocking?
• 9:32
  Jeff Berardelli: It just means stuff gets stuck.
• 9:33
  Jeff Berardelli: So if it was summer, we'd call it a heat dome.
• 9:36
  Jeff Berardelli: But it's not summer, so we're not gonna call it a heat dome because it's even though it's gonna be a much hotter than normal dome in Canada, in Hudson Bay, it's still below freezing and cold during the winter, but it's an equivalent heat dome, but just not hot.
• 9:49
  Jeff Berardelli: It gets stuck.
• 9:50
  Kathleen Biggins: You also said subtropical stream.
• 9:52
  Kathleen Biggins: Can you explain what that is?
• 9:54
  Jeff Berardelli: It's essentially a river of strong winds in the upper atmosphere that carries storms from one place to another.
• 9:59
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, typically, uh, the subtropical jet stream, some years it's there, some years it's not.
• 10:05
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh it sometimes it's strong, sometimes it's not, but it's usually very strong during El Niño's.
• 10:10
  Jeff Berardelli: We're already seeing that happen in California in the southwest.
• 10:12
  Jeff Berardelli: We're about to see it happen across the southeast in the next couple of weeks or so.
• 10:16
  Jeff Berardelli: And the reason why it's stronger is because the convection in the Pacific shifts.
• 10:20
  Jeff Berardelli: Now, this is the key to El Niño.
• 10:22
  Jeff Berardelli: When you take the warm water in the western Pacific and you move it cyclically every few years to the eastern Pacific, you get a buildup of thunderstorms in the eastern Pacific, the equatorial Pacific.
• 10:32
  Jeff Berardelli: That buildup of convection in the central and eastern Pacific, then it actually causes an invigorated subtropical jet and stronger winds that flow around the Baja, California, California, and across the South.
• 10:46
  Jeff Berardelli: So it's essentially moving that warm water changes where the thunderstorms are in the Pacific.
• 10:50
  Jeff Berardelli: That changes where the position is and the strength is of the subtropical jet.
• 10:54
  Jeff Berardelli: It invigorates it, makes it stronger, it changes the wave pattern across the Pacific such that it rearranges the way that weather systems move.
• 11:02
  Jeff Berardelli: It's very characteristic and typical for El Nino to have a strong jet stream across the southern U.S.
• 11:08
  Jeff Berardelli: And it's a strong subtropical jet because of convection or thunderstorms in the eastern Pacific.
• 11:12
  Kathleen Biggins: Does that mean that airplanes will be able to fly faster from the Pacific over to the East Coast?
• 11:18
  Jeff Berardelli: If they happen to be flying uh in the southern part of the U.S., yes, slightly.
• 11:22
  Kathleen Biggins: How about the Northwest?
• 11:23
  Kathleen Biggins: We haven't talked about that yet.
• 11:24
  Kathleen Biggins: What do you think it's gonna be like for them?
• 11:27
  Jeff Berardelli: I'm gonna venture to say it'll probably be drier than it typically would.
• 11:30
  Jeff Berardelli: I think we're gonna see uh quite a contrast between what's gonna happen in Southern California to what's gonna happen in the Pacific Northwest.
• 11:38
  Jeff Berardelli: My guess is the Pacific Northwest will end up being drier than normal because it's gonna be much wetter than normal in the southern part of the Pacific Coast.
• 11:45
  Kathleen Biggins: Goodness knows right now the Pacific Coast is getting inundated with those uh Kelvin waves, right?
• 11:50
  Kathleen Biggins: So they're already experiencing um flooding from the ocean.
• 11:54
  Kathleen Biggins: Yes.
• 11:55
  Kathleen Biggins: Um and you're talking about this heavy rain coming on top of it, it's gonna be a real challenge for them.
• 12:00
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, the real challenge for the Southwest is gonna be the flooding in the valleys.
• 12:03
  Jeff Berardelli: A lot of this heavy rain ends up falling on the hills and in the mountains, and then it just tumbles down the mountains, cascades down the mountains, causes a lot of flash flooding.
• 12:12
  Jeff Berardelli: So that's something that we'll be on the lookout for, I think, a lot as we head through uh the winter.
• 12:16
  Jeff Berardelli: California is already seeing flooding, and so is the Southwest, Desert Southwest.
• 12:20
  Jeff Berardelli: And we're about to see another big event there, too.
• 12:22
  Jeff Berardelli: This season, one bit of good news is that at least the southern half of the Rockies will likely end up with a lot of snow cover.
• 12:28
  Jeff Berardelli: We need that for Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
• 12:31
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, as far as this Kelvin wave goes, we should explain that that's an oceanic wave uh and that has raised sea levels about six to twelve inches along the Baja of California and the Southern California coast.
• 12:43
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh the reason why they're seeing record flooding, coastal flooding in California, is also because water temperatures are around six to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above normal and warm water expands.
• 12:54
  Jeff Berardelli: So that expanding warm water is actually causing sea levels to go up.
• 12:58
  Jeff Berardelli: And then you got to remember that we've seen about a foot of sea level rise in the last hundred years or so in Southern California because of climate change.
• 13:05
  Jeff Berardelli: And so when you put on top of each other, layer the Kelvin wave, you layer this expanse of water because of climate change, you put on top of that a full moon.
• 13:17
  Jeff Berardelli: And when you put all that together, you're adding almost two feet of water on top of what you would otherwise have.
• 13:23
  Jeff Berardelli: What we're dealing with, um, and what we've been dealing with in the West and in Florida are record water levels in certain locations at the exact same time for different-ish reasons.
• 13:34
  Jeff Berardelli: The biggest reason is that we're on a full moon at the moment, um, and that tends to exaggerate tides already.
• 13:41
  Jeff Berardelli: So if you have other meteorological or climatological conditions that add to it, and that's what's happened, they're piling on top of each other.
• 13:47
  Jeff Berardelli: And that's one thing I always say in El Nino, you should expect the unexpected, and that's what we're gonna see.
• 13:53
  Jeff Berardelli: You should expect unexpected things to happen over the next several months, things that we've never seen before, unprecedented things.
• 14:00
  Kathleen Biggins: So I'm a little familiar with that area because I have family who lives out there and I've been on some of those beaches, and just to see the pictures of the ocean going over what used to be an expansive beach and just flowing through those homes and out the back, leaving, you know, a foot or two of sand, it was just kind of almost uh unbelievable for me to see.
• 14:19
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, but it was a reminder of how you're saying unexpected things happen.
• 14:24
  Kathleen Biggins: Things that wouldn't be real to us in yesterday's world need to become real to us in in our new world.
• 14:30
  Kathleen Biggins: And part of that is because climate change is stirring the pot and making El Nino even more deadly and more damaging than it was.
• 14:38
  Jeff Berardelli: We should also consider that there are, you know, we talk about the impacts on the U.S.
• 14:41
  Jeff Berardelli: and most folks who are listening may be listening from the U.S., but the Amazon is going to have a problem this year.
• 14:47
  Jeff Berardelli: There's gonna be big droughts there.
• 14:49
  Jeff Berardelli: There are and will continue to be big droughts uh and fires in Indonesia.
• 14:54
  Jeff Berardelli: And Peru is seeing tremendous amounts of flooding right now.
• 14:57
  Jeff Berardelli: Water temperatures are off the charts.
• 14:59
  Jeff Berardelli: Back in the 1982, 83 El Nino, the Galapagos Islands lost about 75% of their indigenous penguin population.
• 15:07
  Jeff Berardelli: You can only find these Galapagos penguins there.
• 15:10
  Jeff Berardelli: 75% died because of starvation, basically.
• 15:14
  Jeff Berardelli: When you warm waters that much in the eastern Pacific near the Galapagos, you cut off their food supply.
• 15:20
  Jeff Berardelli: And it wasn't just that, a vast majority of the coral reefs were bleached, and a lot of them died during the 82 El Nino.
• 15:27
  Jeff Berardelli: This would be worse.
• 15:28
  Kathleen Biggins: And I think that's a really good point.
• 15:29
  Kathleen Biggins: And I was going to get to the fact that this was impacting the entire world, not just us.
• 15:34
  Kathleen Biggins: So when the last really big El Nino hit, there were also reports of starvation across the world.
• 15:41
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, I guess because of rain patterns changes and crop patterns.
• 15:44
  Kathleen Biggins: Are we better prepared now?
• 15:46
  Kathleen Biggins: Are there things we can do better to prepare?
• 15:48
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, we can always be better, but yes, I think we are.
• 15:51
  Jeff Berardelli: And I think that's one thing we need to take into account as a climate community is that things that may have killed hundreds of thousands of people 100 years ago, that's not likely to happen these days.
• 16:00
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, we have better supply chains.
• 16:02
  Jeff Berardelli: We also have much better preparation.
• 16:04
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, we've been talking about this being the worst El Nino ever in history since like March or April.
• 16:10
  Jeff Berardelli: And we're so we gave people like six months preparation time.
• 16:14
  Jeff Berardelli: And we also understand where those impacts will be to some degree.
• 16:17
  Jeff Berardelli: Now, I can't speak for the preparation of these places.
• 16:20
  Jeff Berardelli: I can just say that we gave them a warning.
• 16:21
  Jeff Berardelli: They probably heard it.
• 16:23
  Jeff Berardelli: That information was likely disseminated.
• 16:25
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, so yeah, I think we're better prepared.
• 16:27
  Jeff Berardelli: It doesn't mean we're not going to deal with adversity.
• 16:29
  Jeff Berardelli: We are.
• 16:30
  Jeff Berardelli: It doesn't mean there aren't going to be deaths.
• 16:32
  Jeff Berardelli: There will.
• 16:33
  Jeff Berardelli: The heat waves that happened in Europe this summer, uh, it looks like I believe they're saying that in the cities alone, I don't want to misquote it.
• 16:43
  Jeff Berardelli: It was tens of thousands of people died.
• 16:45
  Kathleen Biggins: That was like 55,000 or something is what it was.
• 16:49
  Jeff Berardelli: It sounds about right.
• 16:50
  Jeff Berardelli: No, again, we can't uh we can't just uh attribute that to climate change or to El Nino.
• 16:54
  Jeff Berardelli: It's probably a combination of both, and then maybe some other weather pattern, but it all kind of that's that's kind of the point here, right?
• 17:00
  Jeff Berardelli: Climate change on its in itself is going to cause problems, but oftentimes when it causes the worst problems, it's compound effects.
• 17:08
  Jeff Berardelli: And that's what we're most concerned about when it comes to the future.
• 17:11
  Jeff Berardelli: It's not so much climate change isolated, like people always say, what do you worry about most?
• 17:15
  Jeff Berardelli: Is it that her?
• 17:16
  Jeff Berardelli: I don't worry about the hurricane.
• 17:18
  Jeff Berardelli: I don't worry about the heat wave.
• 17:20
  Jeff Berardelli: I worry about the political instability, the migratory crisis, the food shortages on top of the hurricane and the drought and the flood.
• 17:28
  Jeff Berardelli: It's all those things that aggravate an already aggravated political, sociological situation around the world right now.
• 17:36
  Kathleen Biggins: Well, I think that's a really good point.
• 17:37
  Kathleen Biggins: And I think that so often climate change, and I'm sure El Nino falls in this as well, is considered an environmental issue, something that you kind of put over in an area and now in people's minds perhaps becoming a weather issue.
• 17:50
  Kathleen Biggins: But the fact is that because these natural systems are changing so much, they're beginning to impinge on our human systems, like how we grow our food, how we migrate, right, where we live, how we can build our built environment.
• 18:03
  Kathleen Biggins: And that in turn begins to um impact our society and how we are able to govern ourselves.
• 18:08
  Kathleen Biggins: And it's it's something that I don't think people have put into their minds yet.
• 18:12
  Kathleen Biggins: They haven't quite translated, oh, this weather issue over here, that really big hurricane, actually impacts whether I can ensure my home or whether I can keep my home where it is or whether I have to move.
• 18:23
  Kathleen Biggins: And so um it's that that's hard for climate communicators to connect those dots.
• 18:27
  Jeff Berardelli: So well, let me give them some advice.
• 18:29
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah.
• 18:29
  Jeff Berardelli: It's called death by a thousand cuts.
• 18:31
  Jeff Berardelli: It's my food's a little a little more expensive, but I don't realize that part of that is climate change, right?
• 18:38
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh it's my gas is more expensive or my energy is more expensive.
• 18:42
  Jeff Berardelli: You know, it is my life is a little harder in every single way.
• 18:47
  Jeff Berardelli: The the world is a little less stable in every single way, and a part of that is climate change in every way.
• 18:55
  Jeff Berardelli: So it is a death by a thousand cuts.
• 18:57
  Jeff Berardelli: It's little, it's I quit.
• 18:59
  Jeff Berardelli: Let me tell you, I lived in Manhattan for a long time in my life.
• 19:02
  Jeff Berardelli: I'm from New York City originally, and I always say that Manhattan's great, but by the end of the day, you're exhausted.
• 19:07
  Jeff Berardelli: And you don't know why.
• 19:08
  Jeff Berardelli: The reason is that taxi driver who honked his horn, that person on the street that was that was begging you for money, and maybe you gave him money, maybe it didn't bother you, but there's so many things that come at you from the left and from the right.
• 19:22
  Jeff Berardelli: It's so many things that by the end of the day, you're stressed and exhausted, and it's and it's eating away your health and your patience and all those things.
• 19:32
  Jeff Berardelli: It's everything.
• 19:33
  Jeff Berardelli: It's the pizza ride on the subway.
• 19:34
  Jeff Berardelli: Look, I love New York City, and I love everything that New York City has to offer.
• 19:38
  Jeff Berardelli: But all these little things that hit you from every different angle, and that's what's happening around the world.
• 19:45
  Jeff Berardelli: And climate change is a big part of that, right?
• 19:47
  Jeff Berardelli: It's the drought here, it's the hurricane there, it's the insurance prices going up, it's a lack of availability of food, or the food costs more money.
• 19:54
  Jeff Berardelli: You know, it's the fires, it's the breathing in the smoke, it's it's all those things, and it's very hard for you to connect the dots, but your life has been made much more difficult because of climate change, and that's only going to escalate in the future, and it destabilizes the system even more, if that's even possible, than it is right now.
• 20:12
  Kathleen Biggins: Right.
• 20:12
  Kathleen Biggins: And El Nino just makes that more apparent for a short period of time.
• 20:17
  Kathleen Biggins: A lot of people, I believe, and tell me if I'm right, have kind of said El Nino gives us a look into the future of what our regular climate change future could look like on a normal basis before El Nino.
• 20:29
  Kathleen Biggins: Without even El Nino factored in.
• 20:31
  Kathleen Biggins: And so this is giving us a glimpse of our new normal in a few decades.
• 20:36
  Kathleen Biggins: We'll be right back after this short break.
• 20:42
  Kathleen Biggins: So well six months out, really foresee what El Nino was bringing and kind of when it was going to start.
• 21:41
  Kathleen Biggins: What are the new tools that you guys have to predict these types of, I want to say anomalies, though we know that this comes regularly.
• 21:50
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, and how does that help us prepare for the future?
• 21:54
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, it is astonishing, actually.
• 21:56
  Jeff Berardelli: And I'm glad you asked that question.
• 21:58
  Jeff Berardelli: These models have come such a long way.
• 22:00
  Jeff Berardelli: If you had asked me 10 years ago, what's the summer going to be like?
• 22:03
  Jeff Berardelli: What's hurricane season gonna be like, what's the winter gonna be like, I would have said, I don't have any clue.
• 22:08
  Jeff Berardelli: No one can predict six months ahead of time.
• 22:10
  Jeff Berardelli: But the models have become so good.
• 22:12
  Jeff Berardelli: We call them seasonal and sub seasonal models.
• 22:15
  Jeff Berardelli: They have become spectacular to the point where even before a hurricane season here in Florida, I can say this year the hurricane season or the Hurricane tracks will be towards Bermuda.
• 22:25
  Jeff Berardelli: Oh, batting down the hatches.
• 22:27
  Jeff Berardelli: This summer, the hurricane tracks will be right through the Gulf.
• 22:30
  Jeff Berardelli: And I can tell you six months ahead of time, get ready, everybody.
• 22:34
  Jeff Berardelli: This is going to be the worst El Nino we have ever seen, at least since the 1850s, which is exactly the case.
• 22:41
  Jeff Berardelli: The computer model, a lot, and the reason is a lot of the subseasonal models agreed on this.
• 22:46
  Jeff Berardelli: It wasn't like just one model or two models, it was almost every model that was pointing to this being a record-setting event.
• 22:53
  Jeff Berardelli: And us as meteorologists coming to terms with the fact that over the past few years, these models have become very reliable and being able to trust their ability to predict.
• 23:04
  Jeff Berardelli: And they did it again.
• 23:06
  Jeff Berardelli: They've done it over the past couple of summers for hurricane season.
• 23:09
  Jeff Berardelli: They've been right on, and now they're doing it with El Nino.
• 23:12
  Jeff Berardelli: And it is miraculous.
• 23:14
  Jeff Berardelli: I will tell you, miraculous.
• 23:16
  Jeff Berardelli: And it really helps, especially, I would say, subsistence farmers in a lot of uh the global south, where they didn't have any information on what was about to come their way.
• 23:27
  Jeff Berardelli: They didn't know how to plant their crops, when to plant them, what kind of resources they would need to get through that particular growing season.
• 23:35
  Jeff Berardelli: They didn't know any of that.
• 23:36
  Jeff Berardelli: That's a lot of the work that's being done by Columbia Climate.
• 23:38
  Jeff Berardelli: I went to Columbia to get my master's degree.
• 23:40
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, and that's a lot of the stuff I was learning about when I was there is try to provide these resources to help these people with their livelihoods.
• 23:49
  Jeff Berardelli: And so now we have that.
• 23:50
  Jeff Berardelli: So it's making a big difference.
• 23:52
  Kathleen Biggins: Do we have a sense of how frequently El Nino and La Niña come?
• 23:58
  Kathleen Biggins: Is there is there a cycle that they're on?
• 24:01
  Kathleen Biggins: And is that cycle changing because of climate change or other factors?
• 24:05
  Jeff Berardelli: There is a cycle.
• 24:06
  Jeff Berardelli: It's never consistent.
• 24:07
  Jeff Berardelli: Sometimes you can get one El Nino and then the next year you get another El Nino.
• 24:11
  Jeff Berardelli: Sometimes you get two La Niña back to back.
• 24:13
  Jeff Berardelli: We've been seeing that more often than we used to.
• 24:15
  Jeff Berardelli: Sometimes they come, you know, one comes in three years, the next one comes two years later, and it's a five-year cycle.
• 24:21
  Jeff Berardelli: Sometimes it's a seven-year cycle.
• 24:22
  Jeff Berardelli: We do think, though, that climate change isn't causing more variability.
• 24:27
  Jeff Berardelli: So a greater back and forth.
• 24:29
  Jeff Berardelli: And there's a lot of questions as to if we're going to be in a permanent El Nino state in the future or not, meaning it's always warm in the Eastern Pacific.
• 24:40
  Jeff Berardelli: There's some studies that say yes, some studies that say no.
• 24:43
  Jeff Berardelli: That is one of the biggest unknowns in climate science.
• 24:47
  Jeff Berardelli: There are a couple.
• 24:47
  Jeff Berardelli: One of the biggest ones is what's going to happen and what's been happening in the Eastern Pacific.
• 24:52
  Jeff Berardelli: We don't understand because our computer models tell us that it should be warming rapidly in the eastern Pacific.
• 24:58
  Jeff Berardelli: But in reality, it has not been warming rapidly in the Eastern Pacific.
• 25:03
  Jeff Berardelli: So there's a disconnect between what the observations say is happening in the eastern tropical Pacific and what should be happening according to the computer models.
• 25:10
  Jeff Berardelli: So there are certain places there are gaps, and that's one really big gap.
• 25:14
  Jeff Berardelli: I would say it's one of the top three climate gaps, is trying to understand the Eastern Pacific because the Eastern Pacific has huge implications for worldwide weather patterns.
• 25:23
  Kathleen Biggins: So what does that mean in a few decades when El Nino comes back?
• 25:26
  Kathleen Biggins: Or does that mean that it's that much more damaging because it's that much more powerful?
• 25:33
  Kathleen Biggins: Does it keep escalating as temperatures go up?
• 25:36
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, that's a really tough question.
• 25:38
  Jeff Berardelli: And I don't know that we really have the answer to that.
• 25:40
  Jeff Berardelli: Um I think ultimately one thing that we seem to be virtually certain of is that El Nino and La Niña, there's going to be more variability, um, perhaps even more frequency of this back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
• 25:55
  Jeff Berardelli: I do think that we are going to see the propensity for some El Nino's to be stronger than they would have been, meaning that not every El Nino is going to do what this one's doing.
• 26:05
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, this is like a black swan almost.
• 26:07
  Jeff Berardelli: I think that it's more likely we'll see more black swans in the future, if you will.
• 26:12
  Kathleen Biggins: And when you use the word black swan, what do you mean?
• 26:14
  Jeff Berardelli: Something that we couldn't have possibly seen coming, so odd that it's that it defies logic.
• 26:20
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh with the one exception that black swan, in this case, this particular black swan, we could predict like six months ahead of time.
• 26:26
  Jeff Berardelli: So maybe a gray swan.
• 26:30
  Kathleen Biggins: A gray swan.
• 26:32
  Jeff Berardelli: I do believe that this particular El Nino, the intensity of it, would be virtually impossible without man-made climate change.
• 26:40
  Kathleen Biggins: One of the words that you've used quite a lot today has been La Niña.
• 26:44
  Kathleen Biggins: Tell me about El Niña and tell me how it compares to El Nino and how they're related.
• 26:52
  Jeff Berardelli: La Niña is just really the opposite.
• 26:53
  Jeff Berardelli: It's a cooling of the eastern Pacific and a shifting of those thunderstorms away from the eastern and central Pacific back towards the Western Pacific, uh, where more often those thunderstorms are.
• 27:04
  Jeff Berardelli: So it's just essentially a reverse.
• 27:06
  Jeff Berardelli: And you would see the reverse.
• 27:08
  Jeff Berardelli: Like, for instance, La Niña years, you would likely see very dry conditions, very quiet conditions in a place like Florida, for instance.
• 27:15
  Jeff Berardelli: So, and oftentimes it's the opposite, right?
• 27:16
  Jeff Berardelli: The Amazon, you wouldn't see drought.
• 27:18
  Jeff Berardelli: Indonesia, you wouldn't see drought.
• 27:19
  Jeff Berardelli: You might see floods, actually.
• 27:21
  Jeff Berardelli: So it's just really and very much the opposite.
• 27:23
  Jeff Berardelli: And also, I would say you brought it up briefly, it's worth talking about.
• 27:26
  Jeff Berardelli: Let's talk about hurricanes, okay?
• 27:28
  Jeff Berardelli: We knew that it would be a very slow hurricane season in the Atlantic.
• 27:32
  Jeff Berardelli: We were virtually certain.
• 27:33
  Jeff Berardelli: And sure enough, it's historically one of the slowest seasons that we've ever seen in modern history.
• 27:39
  Jeff Berardelli: So the opposite is true during La Niña.
• 27:41
  Jeff Berardelli: During La Niña, we would expect a very invigorated hurricane season in the Atlantic.
• 27:45
  Kathleen Biggins: You talked about how climate change and um El Nino are interacting together to cause some of these damages out on the West Coast and the flooding.
• 27:55
  Kathleen Biggins: It's part of what you delved into.
• 27:57
  Kathleen Biggins: How do we measure?
• 27:58
  Kathleen Biggins: How do scientists parse what portion of the damage is due to El Nino versus climate?
• 28:03
  Kathleen Biggins: Or can we?
• 28:05
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, we know how much the oceans have warmed over the past 50, 100 years or so.
• 28:11
  Jeff Berardelli: So then we can we can kind of measure what's left over is the El Nino signal.
• 28:16
  Jeff Berardelli: You have one computer model, and you run that computer model in the current modern climate with climate change factored in.
• 28:24
  Jeff Berardelli: Then you run that exact same computer model, but you take out all the climate change warming, and then you run them both and you compare the two and you say, oh, okay, this scenario without climate change, which would have been equivalent to 1900, means this heat wave would have been five degrees cooler than it is today, because I'm running this computer model with the current climate and I'm comparing that same computer model to a climate of 1900.
• 28:50
  Jeff Berardelli: And when you do that, you figure out the difference between how much warmer this heat wave was versus how much cooler the heat wave would have been back in 1900.
• 29:00
  Jeff Berardelli: So that's one very useful way of doing climate attribution in addition to using statistical analysis on the climatological record.
• 29:10
  Kathleen Biggins: Terrific.
• 29:10
  Kathleen Biggins: Thank you for explaining that so well.
• 29:12
  Jeff Berardelli: It's called a counterfactual.
• 29:14
  Kathleen Biggins: So, in closing, when we think about how our audience should be preparing for El Nino, um, what can we be doing to get ready for the next two, three, four months when El Nino is going to be at its peak?
• 29:29
  Jeff Berardelli: It's a great question.
• 29:30
  Jeff Berardelli: And because we have so much information and we know pretty much to a great degree what's going to happen in your neck of the woods, everybody's ways in which they prepare are going to be different because you're going to be experiencing different weather.
• 29:42
  Jeff Berardelli: One example I will use here in Florida, you'll want to be prepared for flooding and the possibility of tornadoes.
• 29:48
  Jeff Berardelli: So you'll need to be, you'll need to keep your eyes peeled and your ears open and your phone closed just in case of tornado warnings.
• 29:55
  Jeff Berardelli: So it's just a matter of figuring out what the impacts are on your area, and those are widely disseminated, I think, by now, and then learning how to prepare for that in your particular situation.
• 30:08
  Kathleen Biggins: Thank you for that, Jeff.
• 30:10
  Kathleen Biggins: It has been wonderful to spend this hour with you learning so much about this phenomenon, and I think you really educated our audiences about what's happening and how they can get ready.
• 30:19
  Jeff Berardelli: Glad to be here.
• 30:20
  Jeff Berardelli: Thank you.
• 30:24
  Kathleen Biggins: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 30:26
  Kathleen Biggins: Thank you again to Jeff Berardelli for helping us understand how to look at this weather phenomenon and how we should get prepared.
• 30:34
  Kathleen Biggins: You can find out more information about climate change, how it affects you, and how you can make a difference and maintain your hope at CCHConversations.org.
• 30:44
  Kathleen Biggins: That's the letter C-Change Conversations with an S.org.
• 30:51
  Kathleen Biggins: Simmer Down is produced by Hans Buto and Rebecca Fishkin.
• 30:56
  Kathleen Biggins: A special thanks to Carrie Diekmann, our creative director, and to Nicole Kernan and Margaret Koval for their ongoing contributions.
• 31:04
  Kathleen Biggins: We hope you listen to our other episodes and bring the climate conversation to your kitchen table.