AI Summary
5 min readIn the summer of 2023, the World Meteorological Organization warned that the developing El Niño was "literally off the charts." Some scientists were already calling it a "super" or even "Godzilla" event. "This year we're really seeing an El Niño for the record book," said Julia Cole, a climate scientist and chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan. Normally, El Niños peak around November through January, and Cole said this one was still strengthening. In her opinion, a record-breaking El Niño in the coming year was virtually guaranteed. But a bigger question has long haunted climate science: Are humans making El Niño worse? For decades, the answer has been a frustrating "probably, maybe." Cole thinks she has finally found an answer, buried in coral.
Why the "Human Fingerprint" Has Been So Hard to Find
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:22) **The 'Super' El Niño Headline** - Host Nate Rott introduces the episode's topic: a record-breaking El Niño event that the World Meteorological Organization calls "off the charts" and some are nicknaming "Godzilla."
- 2 (01:18) **Why This El Niño Matters** - Julia explains that stronger El Niños lead to stronger impacts, including more intense floods, droughts, and temperature changes.
- 3 (02:11) **The Coral-Based Investigation** - Julia reveals she has found an answer buried in coral records from the Galapagos Islands.
- 4 (04:08) **El Niño Basics Explained** - Nate clarifies the natural phenomenon: during El Niño, the equatorial Pacific Ocean warms, which warms the atmosphere above it.
- 5 (05:03) **The Long-Standing Question: Is Climate Change Making El Niño Worse?** - Nate asks why scientists have struggled to answer this for so long.
- 6 (06:09) **The Method: Reading Coral Geochemistry** - Julia describes using geochemical records from long-lived corals in the Galapagos as a temperature proxy.
- 7 (08:09) **The Key Finding: A 36% Increase in Variability** - The coral analysis reveals that the range of ocean temperature variability (from high to low) in the last 40-50 years is 36% higher than in the pre-industrial period.
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Show Notes
For millennia El Niño has shaped weather across the globe, fueling flooding in parts of the U.S., droughts and wildfires in Australia and Indonesia, and disrupting fisheries across the Pacific.
Scientists have long wondered if human activities — chiefly the burning of fossil fuels — are making El Niños stronger. Now, on the eve of the strongest El Niño on record, a team of researchers think they have an answer.
Interested in more science behind the weather? Email us your question at [email protected].
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