el Niño-The Boy Wonder of World Weather

the first installment of The Future of Oceans lecture series


with generous support by the Darrow Family

Sunday, October 5 @ 4pm
Fort Worden Chapel


The Port Townsend Marine Science Center (PTMSC) is offering the first lecture in a series titled The Future of Oceans on Sunday, October 5, 2014 at 4 p.m. in the Chapel at Fort Worden.


El Niño—the Boy Wonder of World Weather is being presented by noted ocean researcher, Michael McPhaden, senior scientist at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. Admission is $10 and $5 for PTMSC members. Students and teachers with ID will be admitted free of charge.


“We’re honored to welcome a speaker and scientist of Dr. McPhaden’s caliber to launch our The Future of Oceans lecture series,” said Janine Boire, executive director for the PTMSC. “He is the driving force behind the world’s largest scientific detector, NOAA’s ‘TAO’ array of deep-sea instrument moorings that span one quarter of the Earth’s circumference.”

The October 5 lecture will focus on El Niño, the year-to-year seasonal differences often reflect the chaotic nature of the atmosphere. But variations in the climate system, the most prominent of which is El Niño, can also influence seasonal weather patterns in the Northwest. Together with its companion La Niña, characterized by periods of unusually cold tropical Pacific waters, these two phenomena comprise the strong year-to-year fluctuation of the climate system on the planet.

This lecture will describe what causes El Niño and La Niña, how they affect our weather, how we measure and predict them, and how they may change in the future as concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere increase.


McPhaden is also an affiliate professor at the University of Washington. He is an author of some 300 scientific papers, and has mentored many successful graduate Ph.D. students. He recently served as president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a 62,000 member body which represents many facets of oceanography and earth sciences. Visit him at http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/proj_over/mmcv.html


The Future of Oceans Lecture Series: With more than seven-tenths of the planet’s surface covered in salt water, the future health of our oceans is critical. Join the PTMSC for a series of five lectures on The Future of Oceans the first Sunday of every month, from October through March, (except January due to holidays) to learn about topics such as El Niño, the tides and eddies in Puget Sound, what’s beneath the Salish Sea, Arctic images, and ocean acidification. All lectures are at Fort Worden and the series is provided by the generous support of the Darrow family.

see the poster here.

view the slideshow presentation here.