A Writer’s Journey
©Thomas Nash
2002
A Writer’s Journey
The Quelccaya Ice Cap
© Thomas Nash 2002
An Essential Difference
Scientists = Specialists
Journalists = Generalists
Quantitative v Qualitative
Technical Terms v Common English
What A Scientist Does
Story telling with
Theories
Hypotheses
Experiments
Observations
What A Journalist Does
Story Telling with
Real Events
Real People
What A Journalist Does
The W Questions
Who
Dozens of scientists, millions of
people
What
Ocean, atmosphere,, floods, fires,
disease outbreaks, etc..
Where Everywhere (almost)
When
Months, years, decades, centuries
Advances in niñology
a regional phenomenon
Images ©Thomas Nash 2002
Peru’s coastal desert & fishery
Advances in niñology
a global phenomenon
Wet
Dry
Warm
winter
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
summer
NOAA /PMEL & CPC
Before satellites & computers
hand measurements
Images ©Thomas Nash 2002
Taking sea surface
temperatures
off Paita, Peru
Reading traditional barometer
in Darwin, Australia
El Niño!
A slice through the Pacific
at the Equator
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Red 30° C
Blue 8° C
The collapse of the trade winds triggered
dramatic changes in ocean temperatures & sea
surface heights
El Niño: a geophysical
leviathan
Art Credit:NOAA
in a sea filled with “gentle awful stirrings”
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Dress rehearsal
for something bigger?
August 18, 1997
“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?”
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
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
Rio Nido, California
©Thomas Nash 2002
“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.”
El Niño & Rift Valley fever
flooding near Garissa,Kenya
Photo Credit: 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
Source: NOAA/AVHRR
Satellite images show explosive growth of
vegetation
Kalimantan on fire
up the Mahakam River
Images ©Thomas Nash 2002
Logging the rainforest, Indonesian Borneo
Kalimantan on Fire
©Thomas Nash 2002
Source: ESA
Rescued rainforest
at Wanariset Samboja
©Thomas Nash 2002
Fire legacy: orangutan orphans
Images ©Thomas Nash 2002
in conflicts with villagers, mothers were killed
El Niño: natural or not?
A Dayak farmer’s question
Images ©Thomas Nash 2002
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.
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?
El Niño: natural or not?
the scientists’ question
Or was it, as others suggested, the La Niña side
of the cycle that would be accentuated in a
warming world?
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
(droughts,floods,disease outbreaks, etc.)
1990s The ENSO system & global
warming???
The Past as Prologue
coral paleoclimatology
Source: NASA
Kiritimati Atoll, November 1997
Credit: Richard Grigg, U.Hawaii
“On every side of us swam Sharks
innumerable and so voracious that they bit our
oars…”
James Trevenen, 1777
The Past as Prologue
into the heart of El Niño…
Photo Credit: Richard Grigg,
U.Hawaii
The Moana Wave
“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.”
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
.
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’
©Thomas Nash 2002
Return to Quelccaya
the ice cap is shrinking
©Thomas Nash 2002
In 1974, this boulder was in contact with the ice.
In 2000 the ice was 300 meters away, across the
lake.
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
two non-linear systems in collision
©Thomas Nash 2002
Incan road cuts through pre-Incan terraces
ENSO in 2004-2005
signs of a new ocean warming
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Source: NOAA /PMEL
… amid a lengthy spell of La Niña-like conditions …
A Writer’s Journey
Images © Thomas Nash 2002
made it !