El Niño is nigh, but so what?
About this episode
The episode discusses the upcoming El Niño phenomenon and its potential impacts, alongside insights into ancient marine life and current environmental issues.
With 2023’s El Niño – a recurring pattern of extreme weather across the pacific basin - still leaving a bad taste in people's mouth, 2026 sees an El Niño stirring in the Pacific Ocean and there are warnings that this will be one of the strongest yet. Roland Pease speaks with Amanda Maycock, a climatologist from Leeds University, to discuss what this climate phenomenon is and how it will impact the world from October to early next year. He also hears from Scott Evans from the American Museum of Natural History, who has been exploring the Mackenzie mountains of Canada’s Northwest Territory to better understand the biology and ecology of life on earth before anything we might recognize - from the Ediacara era. This was before the explosion of different animal types with hard shells and bones in the later, Cambrian, time. In certain places around the world, much older rocks from the ancient ocean floor reveal an ecosystem abounding with soft, squidgy animal wierdness. In Canada Scott has found a new trove of these fossils, but from far deeper below the surface of those ancient seas. Did animal life begin deep in the darkest depths rather than paddling in pools nearer the land? Today…
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