On today’s show, Carlos Dávalos is joined by two atmospheric scientists, Mayra Oyola-Merced and Ángel Adames Corraliza from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They discuss how weather systems differ across tropical and mid-latitude regions, how meteorological data is in question under the Trump presidency, and the politicization of weather agencies. And they advise people to pay attention to weather issues from around the world like the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the potential collapse of the rainforest, and the increasing number of aerosols in the atmosphere from wildfires.

The history of modern meteorology is a Western history, but people around the world have had complex understandings of the weather for much longer than our modern data systems. Adames Corraliza explains the Taino hurricane cemi, a pre-colonial numinous object that represents the counter-clockwise circulation of hurricane winds. 

Oyola-Merced describes the inequities in weather system research, which lies primarily in the northern hemisphere. But there are open access sources of satellite weather data that counteract the dominance of the Global North in weather science. 

Featured image of Ángel Adames Corraliza, Mayra Oyola-Merced, and Carlos Dávalos courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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