Looking into the eye of the next big storm?

Capitola winter storm waves, 1-13-2019;

Engaging others, whether it be students in their classrooms or the public, in scientific dialogue over global-scale natural science topics is one of the great unspoken duties, in my mind, of scientists and educators. And nowhere is that at once easier and more difficult than with climate, and specifically with ocean-atmosphere interactions that manifest in the regular cycles we call “El Nino and La Nina”. These cycles are regulated by changes in, and interactions between, sea surface temperature, rainfall, air pressure and temperature, and ocean and atmospheric circulation. Of course, in conversations with both students in the classroom and friends and family, these processes can be broken down further into basic ideas of volume, mass, density, temperature, pressure, and so on.

The idea of climate and oceanic oscillations doubtless began prior to the 1800’s, but the idea of El Nino/La Nina cycles, at least in the Pacific, started when fishermen on the coast South America, in Peru, noticed warm ocean currents appearing around Christmas time every few years. Referring to the birth of Christ, they nicknamed the events “El Nino”, which is of course “the boy” in Spanish. Fishing here is best in La Nina years, when cold upwelling ocean water drives rich nutrients to the surface from the deep.

An El Niño occurs when surface water in the equatorial Pacific becomes warmer than average and east winds blow weaker than normal. The opposite condition is called La Niña: water that is cooler than normal and the east winds are stronger. El Niños typically occur every 3 to 5 years. NOAA “El Nino and La Nina”

We are currently in an uncommon “Triple La Nina”. Here’s an out take from the journal “Nature”: “The current [2022] La Niña started around September 2020 and has been mild-to-moderate most of the time since then. As of April 2022, it intensified, leading to a cold snap over the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean not seen at that time of year since 1950. “That’s pretty impressive,”…

The latest forecast from the World Meteorological Organization, issued on 10 June, gives a 50–60% chance of La Niña persisting until July or September… NOAA’s Climate Prediction Centre has forecast a 51% chance of La Niña in early 2023.

…this prolonged La Niña, unlike previous triple dips, hasn’t come after a strong El Niño, which tends to build up a lot of ocean heat that takes a year or two to dissipate1. “I keep wondering, where’s the dynamics for this?” …” Nature News, 23 June, 2022

One of the advantages of living so close to the ocean is to be intricately connected to these cycles, and being engaged in one spot, one relatively small chunk of land, for many decades is that one can experience these cycles and feel their presence and effect on the land, the ocean, the weather, the climate, and the community. We are indeed very fortunate to live where we do!

The two tables and data are courtesy of https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm

2014: Weak El Nino

2015: Very Strong El Nino

2016: Weak La Nina

2017: Weak La Nina

2018: Weak El Nino

2019: Weak El Nino to Enso Neutral (in Between El/La)

2020: Moderate La Nina

2021: Moderate La Nina

2022:

#Paleontologist, #paleontology, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils, #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #fossil, #fossilhunting, #beachcombing, #santacruzmuseumofnaturalhistory, #SCMNH, #universityofcaliforniamuseumofpaleontology, #UCMP, #CAS, #californiaacademyofsciences, #Monterey, #montereycounty, #mitigationpaleontology, #Purisima, #PurisimaFormation, #fossil, #gastropod, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting, #collectingtechniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene, #foundartifacts, #FossilFriday

 

Oh for '70's days gone by...

 

Two months out pre-pandemic hordes, January 11th, 2020. Oh for '70's days gone by... #Paleontologist, #paleontology, #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #Monterey, #montereycounty, #paleontology, #beachfossils, #mitigationpaleontology, #Purisima, #PurisimaFormation, #fossil, #gastropod, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting, #collectingtechniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene

Meanwhile, Back at the Paleo Prep Lab

 Once fossils are blocked out of the rock in the field, those blocks with the fossils inside are brought back to the lab. Once there, as in this case with this Macoma sp. clam (WT892.14) (not a Cryptomya), paleontologists will begin to dig and prepare underneath the fossil to release it completely from its rocky tomb. This can only be done with the most robust fossils; many are so delicate that they need to remain in their original rocky blocks. Once the fossil is completely cleaned of sediment it can be preserved with liquid consolidant that soaks into it and which will harden and preserve the fossil for many decades of research in the museum. Finally, it is recorded numerically, which corresponds to the descriptive data on where and when it was discovered! #Paleontologist, #SantaCruz, #Monterey, #paleontology, #beachfossils, #mitigationpaleontology, #Purisima, #PurisimaFormation, #fossil, #gastropod, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting, #collectingtechniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene.

Aladdin's Lamp Comes to Life

 This fossil clam is named Yoldia cooperi (Gabb, 1865), is approximately 4 million years old, and is found occasionally in the Purisima Formation along Monterey Bay. The genus Yoldia is named in honor of D. A. D.'Aquirra e Gadea, Count of Yoldi, a Danish shell collector. I'm not sure who Cooper was. I enjoy discovering this beautiful clam species because of its fine sculpture, its thin shell (which makes it challenging to collect unbroken so it keeps my skill set sharp), and its whimsical similarity to an Aladdin's Lamp! Also interesting and making it completely unique from all other mollusks in the Purisima is this species' long row of many fine hinge teeth and alternating sockets found along the majority of the dorsal margin of the shell, shown in the second photo above. Today, Yoldia cooperi lives in the eastern Pacific from Humboldt County to Baja California Sur and in fine sediments from 5 to 40 meters. Its habitat has likely not changed much in the past 4 million years, as it is found entombed in fine to medium sandstones of the Purisima as well. Shown here with some of the tools needed to extract it safely from the rock, including the consolidant; a liquid hardening compound. This particular specimen at the top was extracted over a period of several days in order to allow the successive applications of consolidant to fully dry before moving the specimen from its tomb. WT730 (Below), WT765 (Above). #Paleontologist, #Santa Cruz, #Monterey, #paleontology, #beach fossils, #Purisima, #Purisima Formation, #fossil, #pacific paleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #fossil hunting, #collecting techniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene, 

CAUTION; Science experiment in progress!

This was one of our favorite labs in class. With the advent of the new NGSS Science Standards, models were shifted from static to dynamic, meaning they needed to model a process or function rather than a single slice in time, such as a stationary cell model. This model represents a batholith and I used this model in preparation for our annual trip to Yosemite for a week with 7th graders. A batholith is a large (at least 40 miles across) underground volume of semi-liquid igneous rock that rises, due to temperature differences, into the Crustal layer of the Earth but does not erupt onto the surface. The word batholith comes from the Greek bath or "deep" and lith or "rock". In the model, the hot plate represents the internal heat of the mantle, the red wax represents the igneous batholith, the sand represents the lower Crust and the water represents the upper Crust. The model also represents well the process of pluton formation: many pulses of igneous rock intrusion which combine to form a batholith. The Yosemite batholith; Half Dome, El Capitan, and most of the other rocks in the park, is part of the Sierra Nevada batholith and rose up into the Crust during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, 120-85 million years ago. It was later exposed by erosion. Interestingly, a geologic map of the face of El Capitan wasn't created until 2011-2013 when a multidisciplinary team created the first map. For more information refer to this link: https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/granite.htm #batholith, #Yosemite, #geology, #scienceteaching, #middleschool, #pluton, #tectonics, #California, #experiment, #modeling, #NGSS, @pacificpaleontology