This week we talk about El Nino, what it is, how it works, and what it means for this winter. We also discuss pumpkin carving injuries on this week’s Fun Paper Friday!

• Spanish for “the Nino” reference
• Bill Nye El Nino Skit

ENSO

• The Southern Oscillation and Its Link to the ENSO Cycle (NOAA)
• ENSO Current Status (NOAA Slide Deck)
• The ENSO Cycle (NOAA)
• ENSO Blog
• ENSO General Info

El Nino

• Indices of El Nino Evolution (Trenberth and Stepaniak, 2000)
• National Data Buoy Center
• Current Satellite SSTs
• El Nino General Info
• NOAA El Nino Portal
• Nino Areas Map

Consequences

• Triple Hurricane Picture
• Hurricane Patricia
• Exacerbating an already bad drought in the Pacific NW.
• Helping to alleviate drought in the SW and OK.
• El Nino years usually mean much lower chances of Atlantic Hurricane development and landfall

Fun Paper Friday

This week we look at experiments about how safe different pumpkin carving tools are. Not for the faint of heart!

Marcus, A. M., Green, J. K., & Werner, F. W. (2004). The safety of pumpkin carving tools. Preventive Medicine, 38(6), 799–803. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2004.01.008

Contact us:

Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - show@dontpanicgeocast.com

John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman

Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin

This week Shannon talks about back to back field trips, broken airplanes, and rain. John relates a story about a strange northeast tradition and shares a traffic related fun paper.

Shannon’s Trip

• Paper about zebra dolomite
• Sand Bar Videos
• Glen Canyon Dam
• Hoover Dam
• Riffle
• Lee’s Ferry
• Kring Paper in Episode 30
• Meteor Crater
• Lowell Observatory

Punkin’ Chunkin’

• Howard, PA Chunkin’ Website
• Graupel
• World Championship Punkin Chunkin
• Smokin’ Lamas

Fun Paper Friday

• Have you ever been stuck in traffic and wondered why the traffic jam moves like a wave? This week we discuss the dynamics of traffic jams.
• Giant traffic jam in China
• Kerner, B. S. (1998). Experimental features of self-organization in traffic flow. Physical Review Letters, 81(17), 3797–3800. http://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.81.3797
• Flynn, Morris R., et al. “Self-sustained nonlinear waves in traffic flow.” Physical Review E 79.5 (2009): 056113.

Contact us:

Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - show@dontpanicgeocast.com

John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman

Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin

This week we talk about water on Mars and aeroelastic flutter of bird wings.

• John got married with drones and garter cannons. Keep an eye on his Twitter feed for more videos soon.
• We have a GSA poster and AGU Talk!

Mars

• Mars facts from NASA
• Mars Cultural Fascination
• The Martian Way
• Seveneves
• The Martian
• Elon Musk Bio

Water on mars

• Recurring Slope Linea (RSL), identified in 2011 by Lujendra Ojha (then student, now at Georgia Institute of Technology)
• Great pictures of RSLs
• Recurring slope lineae in equatorial regions of Mars (Nature Geoscience)
• HiRISE observations of Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL) during southern summer on Mars (Icarus)
• Detection of Perchlorate and the Soluble Chemistry of Martian Soil at the Phoenix Lander Site (Science)
• Phoenix Lander *Spectral evidence for hydrated salts in recurring slope lineae on Mars (Nature Geoscience)

Fun Paper Friday

Clark, C. J., Elias, D. O., & Prum, R. O. (2011). Aeroelastic flutter produces hummingbird feather songs. Science, 333(6048), 1430–1433. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1205222

• Heterodyne
• Convolution
• Neat Audio Convolution Demo Video

Contact us:

Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - show@dontpanicgeocast.com

John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman

Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin

This week we interview Kina McAllister to talk about her science activity kits for girls and then talk about the optimal office temperature setting in this week’s Fun Paper Friday!

• STEMBox Website
• @STEMBox Twitter
• STEMBox Facebook
• Original KickStarter
• @KinaButterJelly on Twitter
• Woodland Park Zoo
• HiveBio
• EDC Show with Bullet Journal Links

Fun Paper Friday

• This week we have a paper with a horrible title, but a very interesting study of what the best temperature is for an office space.
• Kingma, B., & van Marken Lichtenbelt, W. (2015). Energy consumption in buildings and female thermal demand. Nature Climate Change, 1–5. http://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2741

Contact us:

Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - show@dontpanicgeocast.com

John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman

Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin

• Open Hardware Summit 2015
• Hackable badge!

Talks

• AnnMarie Thomas (Univ. St. Thomas) “Making Makers”
• Jason Kessler and Jon Ruston talked about ULTRASCOPE
• Mach 30 president J. Simmons showed new cad/modeling linked tools that they are using to create open thrusters, rockets, etc.
• Yavin cold gas thruster as test bed
• Joshua Pearce showed how open hardware in science can save us a bundle think of all the outdated lab equipment sitting around unsupported.
• Checkout Joshua’s book “Open-Source Lab” and new “Building open source hardware” by Alicia Gibb
• Bruce Boyes on the Wright Brothers and Patents
• Open prosthetic development
• Open fluid chemistry for biology studies with an Arduino shield
• Open Hardware Certification

Fun Paper Friday

• This fun paper looks at how using ice shells can reduce drag and some of the non-intuitive physics behind it.
• Gizmodo article
• Pykrete
• Vakarelski, I. U., Chan, D. Y. C., & Thoroddsen, S. T. (2015). Drag Moderation by the Melting of an Ice Surface in Contact with Water. Physical Review Letters, 115(4), 044501–4. http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.044501

Contact us:

Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - show@dontpanicgeocast.com

John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman

Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin