HN Reader

gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/climate/pacific-cold-wate...

For those technically inclined, look up Ekman transport. And if you rabbit hole far enough, you'll encounter one of the most awe inspiring units of measurement, the Sverdrup.

As an aside, Panama is a particularly sensitive point in climate models I've run.

(Disclosure that I manage a climate research group)

Original PNAS article: "Unprecedented suppression of Panama’s Pacific upwelling in 2025" - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2512056122

Reading about the Azores high, Hadley cells, etc. on Wikipedia is incredibly illuminating. Hadley cells and related phenomena combined with the Coriolis effect explain a bunch of weather phenomena: trade winds and westerlies, the jet stream, hurricane formation, global rainfall patterns.

Somehow I get the feeling if they used the word 'mass' instead of 'blob', a lot more readers would take the subject seriously.

> The record he helps maintain shows the upwelling has taken place annually for at least 40 years...

40 data points isn't a lot.

The YT channel Space Weather News covered this and the cause. Worth knowing what’s really going on with our universe.