Kelvin wave

With KAZU News, I'm Paul Fingerode, hosting Monterey Bay Today for this Friday afternoon, October 16th.

A Kelvin wave has pushed local sea levels unusually high recently.

KAZU's Aaron Malsbury dives into the science behind it.

Trade winds across the equator usually push water west towards Indonesia, but some years those winds break down.

And it pushes that bulge of water back over the Pacific towards us.

It hits South America and then it crawls up our coast.

These bulges of water, called Kelvin waves, can raise sea levels by several inches for weeks at a time.

One is passing now.

Trapped against the shoreline, every harbor feels your force.

Here comes the Kelvin wave, rolling up the coast to me.

Every tide's a little higher when you're warming up the sea.

You're running high above prediction and the storms are on their way.

Eighty-three, you took the piers; ninety-eight, you took the cliffs; twenty sixteen, you took the sand.

And every time you come back, the sea's already higher than before.

Here comes the Kelvin wave, rolling up the coast to me.

Every tide's a little higher when you're warming up the sea.

A tsunami is much different.

A tsunami engulf is, engulfs the entire coast and, and goes all the way inland, where the Kelvins, uh, reach to a certain point.

But a tsunami, which I had the unfortunate experience of, um, being, uh, present during the Hong Kong, that was something else.

But, uh, let me tell you about this now is Panama has now recorded more than 200 aftershocks following a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that damaged hundreds of homes and infrastructure across the country's central provinces, prompting a, the government to declare a national state of emergency over the weekend.

60 feet across the ocean.

A Kelvin wave.

Riding just a-

Now, unless you're an oceanographer or a meteorologist, there's a pretty good chance you've never heard of one, but these waves play an important role in how our oceans move heat around the planet.

Trapped against the shore.

And apparently, they're also excellent material for a power ballad.

Here comes the Kelvin wave, rolling up the coast today.

I came up with the idea to use, you know, kind of an '80s power ballad i- i- in part because I thought it would be interesting, but also I think it kind of fits this process quite well because it's a slow buildup.

Mystery of the week.

What are Kelvin waves? Why are we talking about this, John? Because right now we're seeing a total increase in something called the super El Nino.

So every so often, maybe every 10, 20 years when El Nino starts to fire itself up, Kelvin waves, John, are these underwater waves of heat.

Now, they never break the surface.

So if you were sitting on the coastline, you would never see it.

You know, it's not the thing that surfers would want.

But they're deep underwater waves, John, that could be hundreds of miles long.

And what we're saying in simplicity terms here is that when the lunar high tides can occur and some of these Kelvin waves can hit the coast, you, of course, would see a, well, maybe not a super dramatic rise in the ocean.

It was a big week.

The Kelvin Wave.

If that phrase has suddenly started showing up in your feed, welcome to one of those wonderful moments where a deeply nerdy meteorological term goes viral, and no, it's not some giant wave about to crash onto the West Coast.

It's actually more like the Pacific Ocean sloshing around in what's essentially a giant bathtub.