[Tashiana Osborne] There's way more to your weather
forecast than you might think.
Scientists go to extreme lengths
to better understand the atmosphere
and the impacts of weather.
For example, there are crews of people
that go up in airplanes and fly over storms
and actually release weather instruments
to measure atmospheric variables during these storms.
[Kate Furby] Welcome to Wavelengths,
where we talk about our planet
with experts from Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
covering everything from the deep sea
to the edge of the atmosphere.
I'm Kate Furby,
a marine biologist and journalist.
I got my PhD here a few years ago, and now I'm back,
learning more about what's happening at Scripps.
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We're here today with Tashiana Osborne.
Tashiana is a PhD student who studies atmospheric rivers.
Thanks so much for joining us.
I'm so excited to learn about your research.
I'm glad to be here.
Thanks for having me.
What kind of scientist are you?
I'm in hydrometeorology,
and I study rivers in the sky
or what we call atmospheric rivers.
What is an atmospheric river?
So an atmospheric river,
if you can imagine a river in the sky,
that's kind of like what it is.
They're these ribbons of enhanced moisture
in the low part of the atmosphere
that actually form over the ocean,
and can travel to reach land,
to reach places like Western U.S.
Can you see it?
More so what you'll see is clouds,
like a normal storm since they do bring in rain and snow.
A lot of times you'll see the clouds in the sky
that come with them.
Is it sort of like condensation?
Yeah, so there's evaporation up from the surface
near over the ocean.
And then that strong evaporation
can lead to these clouds that form.
And that's through condensation.
So we have these ribbons of water vapor
moving in the atmosphere.
How much water are we talking?
So actually, these atmospheric rivers
pack a ton of moisture.
And if you were to squeeze out all that moisture,
that water vapor into liquid,
you could end up with more than 25 times
the amount of water in the Mississippi River.
[Kate] What?
[Tashiana] Yeah.
[Kate] Okay, can you say that again?
25 times or more.
And that's at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
So it's a lot of water.
Wow, that's crazy.
All right, so that's pretty intense.
That's a lot of water.
And I'm like a selfish human.
So how is that gonna impact me?
So atmospheric rivers come with both benefits and hazards.
They actually provide us,
each cool season with up to half of our water supply.
So they're really important.
We need that water supply.
And they also supply us with our snow pack
which is really valuable.
But on the other side,
if we can't understand all of the details
of atmospheric rivers and when and where they're gonna hit
and how intense they are,
they can come with a lot of additional hazards.
And so that can mean snow hazards, rain, wind,
all of those that can lead to things
like flooding, landslides,
and all sorts of hazards
that affect kind of like life and property.
So how did you get interested in this research?
I really got into kind of atmospheric science
without realizing that it was a science.
When I was a little girl,
I would lay in the grass and look up at the sky
and try to think of what shapes the clouds made.
And that was always something
that seemed to bring a sense of peace for me.
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Wow, that wouldn't look like a lion's head.
That one looks like a bunny.
[Tashiana] The first rule of meteorology
is the atmosphere is in a constant state of chaos.
If any of the ingredients change,
it impacts the weather.
Atmospheric rivers are one type of storm.
These ribbons in the sky
carry a large amount of water vapor.
They form over tropical water,
and they can travel to reach land here in the Western U.S.
and also other regions of the world.
They rain as they move over the ocean,
and can eventually reach land
where they can provide more rain and snow.
[Kate] The clouds are really far away from us right now.
How are you able to study this science?
So one of the things that we use are weather balloons.
And so we attach an instrument called a radiosonde
to these weather balloons.
The weather balloons can bring the instrument
up into the sky
and measure different variables of the atmosphere,
before, during, and after the storms
to kind of understand how they evolve
and what's changing during them.
It seems like climate change
may be impacting atmospheric rivers
in a way that's creating more extreme weather
on both ends of the spectrum.
Is that right?
So actually, we have these wild swings
between drought years and wet years in California.
And we're expecting those swings to be more intense
than they have been already.
This is common with science, right?
You're trying to get better data
so you can better understand the world
so that we can plan accordingly.
Exactly. That's right.
All of these observations that we get,
whether it's on the ground or from airplanes in the sky
or from satellites, helps us better understand
what's happening in the atmosphere and on the ground.
And so we're able to incorporate all those observations
to make better forecasts.
And that is ultimately what's been really important.
Wow, I had no idea before we talked,
how much atmospheric rivers and weather
influence our water supply,
our daily lives, our city planning, even.
Thank you so much for all of the work that you've done
to help us get this really important data.
Thanks so much for having me.
It's such a pleasure to do science for society.
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