Shadowing Practice: The Biggest El Niño in Recorded History - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Chuck, we are long overdue for an explainer on El Nino.
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Oh, yes.
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Okay, I don't know anything about it.
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Okay.
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Okay, so that's the end of the explainer.
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Well, here we go.
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No, but we are nearby
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Columbia University that has their share of climate experts, in particular, Adam Sobel.
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Adam, welcome to StarTalk.
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Thank you.
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You are not just an expert in climate, you specialize in extreme climate.
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Nice.
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Extreme weather.
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Extreme weather events, yes, and their relation to climate, yes.
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Oh, my gosh.
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Which means that you are super busy. Of late, yes.
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I would suspect so.
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And so let's just, the basics.
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What the hell is El Nino, and who does it affect most?
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Okay, so El Nino is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon that has its center of action, as we say, in the equatorial Pacific.
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So on the equator, in the east side of the Pacific Ocean, like offshore Peru and around the Galapagos Islands,
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which is normally very cold because water from the deep ocean comes up, so it's cold relative to the tropics around it.
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The ocean temperature is colder than it would otherwise be.
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The sea surface temperature is cold compared to other places at low latitudes.
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Got it.
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And there's lots of fish because there's nutrients coming up and all that stuff.
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Darwin, you know, discovered all the animals there.
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So it's normally very cold, and in an El Nino event, it warms up.
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So the upwelling stops, the surface water becomes warmer, and that shifts the circulation in the atmosphere, too, across the whole Pacific.
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Why?
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Why the atmosphere?
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You're talking about the ocean.
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Places in the tropics that have high sea surface temperature tend to be places that have a lot of rain,
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because the warm and humid air that's close to that warm surface water is buoyant and rises,
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and so you get, normally like the western part of the tropical
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Pacific around Indonesia is very rainy, and the east around Peru is very dry,
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and that's associated with the warm sea surface temperature in the west and the cold in the east.
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So when the east warms up, the rain shifts east, and as you know, probably, when rain, water condenses in the atmosphere,
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there's latent heating associated with that.
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It warms the air, and so that affects the circulation of the whole atmosphere.
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So the so -called walker circulation shifts.
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So that, the rising shifts eastward, and that rearranges the whole circulation of the atmosphere globally.
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Right, so it has it has what we call teleconnections which affect things far outside the tropics
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So it's a it's a global phenomenon actually right, but one that starts in the tropical
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Pacific and has its own sort of dynamics
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It makes it happen as if my memory serves this is associated with winter months
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That's right northern hemisphere winter months.
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That's that's right I mean it the the cycle an El Nino event can last as long as about a year
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They usually get going in spring or summer as this one did and we're in the middle of one now
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Yes, we're in the middle of a big one now and the biggest one in a long time
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But they usually have their maximum amplitude in the northern hemisphere winter and the name
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El Nino is a Spanish name referring to Christmas The real problem here is we have to stop this Mexican weather
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They're from coming on to our borders.
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That's the problem.
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You look down and you say, if the border was secure, we could keep these Ninos out.
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So it seems to me you guys now have a scale to indicate the severity of the El Nino.
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And what is your index there to make that measurement?
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Yeah, there's a bunch of different indices people use, but the most common one is the so -called Nino 3 .4,
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which is what we do is you draw little boxes in the pacific ocean in different places
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and 3 .4 refers to a particular box in the sort of eastern part of the equatorial pacific
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and then we measure the sea surface temperature anomaly
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so it's average in that box in
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that box how different is it than either the historical average
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or now we have a new way where we compare
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it to the rest of the tropics today as a way of kind of taking out global warming
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and there's reasons to do that but they're slightly different
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but basically it's the sea surface temperature anomaly in that box
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which means how how much warmer than average is it in
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that place because that's the the place
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that seems to most reflect the bigger phenomenon and um yeah
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so so now we apparently we're about three degrees celsius oh wow in that
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which is a very very big number yeah that's why they're calling
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it super el nino right right anything over two is considered super for whatever that's what right
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so this sounds like super duper right no it may turn out to use that word you have my permission
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Well, I mean, it's, you know, it's an arbitrary threshold.
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It's not like something radically different happens at 2 .1 versus 1 .9 degrees.
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But this one is forecast to be possibly the biggest one since we have modern data.
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So can you tell us exactly how it will change the weather that we experience?
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Because a lot of people psychologically connect weather to climate.
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Yeah, El Nino events have sort of standard patterns that happen with them.
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And they don't always happen exactly the same way, but they're pretty repeatable, typically.
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And El Nino doesn't tell you what weather's going to happen in a single day,
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but they tell you how the seasonal patterns are going to change.
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So a typical
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El Nino event has wet weather across the southern
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United States, including
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Southern California, dry in the Pacific Northwest.
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Hurricanes in the Atlantic are suppressed.
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That's why it's been dead.
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Atlantic hurricanes have been dead.
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This past year, there was no hurricane -level storm, is that correct?
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I think that is true, that we have not had an actual...
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So this is how you would account for that, but someone naively would approach that and say, you alarmist or clueless.
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You said the weather would get worse, and we didn't have a single hurricane hitting the east coast of the United States.
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So you all have your head up your ass.
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And you want me to refute that?
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No, but...
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So that's my starter point to say, you have an explanation for that, that is triggered by the El Nino.
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Right.
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I mean, if what you're saying is like, how come climate change doesn't make everything get worse year after year?
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There's a lot of natural variability on top of the, I mean, first of all,
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the picture of global warming and hurricanes is a long, complicated subject.
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It's not as simple as all the storms get worse everywhere at the time.
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But on top of the global warming trend, which is there in many different, you know, many, many different metrics around the world.
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When you say many metrics, it's many different branches of scientific inquiry that arrive at the same conclusions.
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From migration patterns and, you know, animal behavior and glaciers and atmosphere, right?
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So this is not just you guys, you know, piling up in a lab saying, let's tell everybody that this is happening.
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You have people you never even met who don't even publish in your same journals arriving at these same conclusions.
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Right.
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There's a lot of global changes, and a lot of them are attributable to warming.
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To warming, although a lot are attributable to other things, but yeah.
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Can you talk about what an El Nino does to the jet stream?
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because you started off by saying the atmosphere and global
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and a lot of people don't know
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that you know the the earth's atmosphere is a fluid and
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so it is one atmosphere it's not like we have our atmosphere over there they have their atmosphere
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so what happens to the jet stream yeah as carl sagan said uh air molecules don't carry passports yeah
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they just move wherever the hell they want yeah yeah
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so what happens to the jet stream right the jet stream um typically contracts a little closer to the equator,
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which is actually the big reason why the Atlantic hurricanes are suppressed, because it makes wind shear over the hurricane region.
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Right.
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But the jet stream, besides shifting a little bit equator, it also gets wiggles in it of a particular character.
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And so some of these effects like, you know, like the wet weather in, you know, in LA or the dry weather in Seattle
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or the many other impacts of El Nino
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that happen at those kind of middle latitudes are results of wiggles in the jet stream
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that come out of the shifts in the tropical circulation that then radiate into the jet stream.
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Why does El Nino happen at all?
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Yeah, it's understood to be a coupled atmosphere -ocean phenomenon,
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meaning that if either the atmosphere or ocean weren't involved, it wouldn't happen.
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So you have to try to picture it's cold on the equator in the east
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and it's warm in the west and the wind at the surface blows from the east towards the west.
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And that's because it's warm in the west and cold in the east, but it also causes it because the westward blowing wind causes upwelling.
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It pushes on the ocean in such a way
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that cold water has to come up from below to replace the water that's being pushed away.
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And so the wind that's blowing toward the west makes upwelling, which makes it cold.
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But the fact that it's cold made the wind.
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So there's a circular thing where they're both influencing each other
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and similarly if that starts to if something starts to break
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that pattern if something makes the wind slow down then it'll start to warm up under it
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and then that'll make it slow down more
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so there's a sort of positive feedback where these things reinforce themselves what triggers it is very subtle
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and not always known i mean people can point to specific events like
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and i actually don't know with this one i haven't paid attention but there's often not a single clear trigger
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Sometimes there's what we call
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Madden -Julian oscillation events, which are like, that's another weather phenomenon that happens in more like weeks rather than months to years.
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Is it good to have a weather phenomenon named after you, or is that bad?
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It's very good.
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But that's a phenomenon where you get large regions of rainy weather and winds blowing from the west,
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which is not the norm in the tropics, that move eastward.
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So they're almost like mini
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El Ninos that kind of move across the Pacific, and that's thought to sometimes trigger them.
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But it's often not a clear, there's often not a single clear trigger.
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What's the earliest
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El Nino we have on record?
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Reliable data?
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That's a tough one to answer.
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The instrumental record goes back somewhere into the 19th century, although it gets sketchier as you're going further back.
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As you'd expect, of course.
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The best is after satellites.
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Before that, you have ship records that people are patching up between and then before that you have paleo proxies.
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So people look at coral and other things.
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So what's the earliest depends kind of what data you're willing to accept.
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I'm trying to make a connection.
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If you're gonna say that climate change, global warming is affecting
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El Nino, but we've had
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El Ninos for centuries, possibly even longer based on your paleo data, where can you implicate climate change,
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global warming with the El Ninos that we see?
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Yeah, I mean, El Nino and climate change is a complicated subject.
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It's true that it's a natural phenomenon.
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It would happen even if there was no people.
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It's very likely that human -induced climate change affects it
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because it affects almost everything in the climate system to one degree or another.
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How it affects it is quite unclear as far as my understanding of literature.
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The models say a lot of different things.
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Actually, what the models predict is that the average state of the climate in the Pacific should look more and more like
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El Nino as time goes on, and that has not happened.
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It has actually gone the other way for the last sort of few decades.
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And we're all trying to figure out what that means.
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But second of all, there have been a bunch of huge
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El Ninos at the same time.
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So, you know, big events.
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97, 98 was at that time the largest one of the century.
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But then 15, 16 was about the same or maybe even stronger.
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And this one's probably going to beat both of them.
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So we're having these huge events.
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Is that a global warming signal?
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There's some people, you know, some evidence suggests it is but it's it's pretty uh you can't say it statistically
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because we don't have the sample isn't big enough they only happen every few years
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so you know in 100 years we don't have
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that many of them but that is not to say
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that all of the information
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and the data on climate human cost climate change is not exactly what it is
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which is correct the fact that there's el nino doesn't by itself tell you anything about the global warming science.
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It's all related, and in fact, El Nino also warms the average temper of the whole planet by a few tenths of a degree.
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It's like, it's a natural part of, you get extra global warming when there's an El Nino, but it's not human -inducing.
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So professionally, are you primarily a modeler on computers, or are you a theorist?
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How would you characterize what kind of a climate scientist you are?
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I used to say I was a theorist, but I wouldn't say that anymore.
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Because all the theories have come true!
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We don't we don't have as clear a distinction between theory.
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First of all, we don't have experiments right in this field
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We only have objects as an astro the astrophysics, right?
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We don't have experiments.
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So you have what you're given
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It's an observational science.
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So like many people I work with observations theory and models
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But I guess I'd be considered more of a model than anything else
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So I love models
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because that's the it's how we explore our understanding of nature in the future got it
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and in my world when we model colliding galaxies
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or you know the patient doesn't die there's not an insurance claim right
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if I'm wrong right whereas
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if you you your climate community predict something based on a model
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and you expect people to respond to it
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and the model goes astray from reality yeah that's hard to mend
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that relationship back with the public how what do you do about that are Are you asking about any particular,
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I mean, we do many different kinds of forecasts, weather, seasonal climate, global warming.
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Broadly.
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Broadly.
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Well, see, I think what's more important is, and not to rephrase your question, but to rephrase your question,
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how does the public know that it can put faith and trust in the overarching modeling of climate progressions?
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Right.
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I mean, first of all, at the big picture, the predictions have been pretty good.
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Yeah, I mean the models that Jim Hansen
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and others were making in the 70s and 80s as far as to how much global warming
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We would see have been pretty close to what's happened
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Mm -hmm and a lot of the other predictions have been true as well
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Like that the Arctic warms much faster than everywhere else
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Ice melts that the stratosphere cools while it warms.
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That's a greenhouse gas signature.
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There's a whole bunch of got it
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So fingerprints that the macroscopic phenomena.
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Yeah You check the boxes there.
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Yeah, and anything more detailed than
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that there was not a lot of confidence in to begin with so and
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when it comes to global warming
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I mean the big picture the amount of warming has been
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pretty well predicted at a global scale as we say many
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of the other macro things at a detailed level the uncertainties get very big you know when When it comes to...
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how specific kinds of weather extremes are going to change in some particular spot.
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Because that's what anybody cares about.
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You know, is it going to rain on, is my house going to flood on the Florida coast?
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And I think that's the real challenge of communicating the severity and urgency of human -caused climate change.
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Because if you try to tie it to one single event in the future, then, you know, you're going about it the wrong way.
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But if you look at it like, here's the trend, the trend is just going to continue to get worse.
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We are currently in the hottest year ever, ever, and the last five years were the hottest five years ever.
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Then you can start to say, hey, wait a minute, wait.
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So I think that's what's really important.
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And we have to kind of move away from, you know, looking at it.
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As I said, climate is not weather.
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And just really keep it to climate.
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Because if you want to look at singular events, and we missed a huge opportunity the glacier collapse that just happened
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that everybody so many people were like oh that's AI
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because that's how horrific it was it was that bad
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that people were like that's AI I mean AI video yeah AI video
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that didn't really happen like yeah buddy
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because that's what real life disaster looks like okay like Zemeckis can't think of
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that okay so you know um but
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that is something we could say 100 % attributable to
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human -caused climate nothing is a hundred percent general rule of thumb nothing
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but when I say what I'm saying the closest it's a glacier melt that's what was predicted that's what happened
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and then the glacier collapse I think the skepticism
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that we have on climate science like so much
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so many other subjects now is is a consequence of political polarization I don't think it's
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because people are looking at the scientific evidence and thinking, oh, but your forecast was off, you know, outside the error bars that you gave.
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I just, I'm skeptical of that, that we should communicate somehow the uncertainty differently.
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And what would you say as a climate scientist would be beneficial to better communicate this issue?
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I don't know.
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I mean, as I said, I'm just, you know, there's a lot of ways that I think as scientists,
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we're not trained to communicate to the public.
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A lot of us have to unlearn how to talk like we learn to talk to our colleagues
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there's a lot of things I don't want to I don't mean to diminish the question
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we can always communicate better at the same time I don't really buy the line
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that like people don't believe it because we didn't say it right
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because you do hear
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that yeah I don't believe you know
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it's like you should always be positive no
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you should make people afraid no
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you should I don't know people have all the emotions
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they're gonna happen you gotta no I agree with you gotta be genuine don't use jargon you know
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You guys know.
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I mean, you're the experts, right?
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Dude, thanks for coming.
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For taking a subway ride three stops to come down from Colombia to my office here at the Planetarium.
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Thank you.
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Thanks for having me.
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All right, that's an explainer, Chuck.
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That was great.
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Right in your zone.
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You know I love it.
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Because you a climate dude.
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The more we talk about climate, the happier I am.
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That's evident.
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All right.
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This has been another StarTalk explainer.
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This one on El Nino and associated climate phenomena.
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And thank you again for being here.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.
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Keep looking up.
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Space fact.
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In China, where milk is not a popular beverage among adults, they don't call our galaxy the Milky Way.
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Instead, it's called Yin He, translated the Silver River.
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We'll see you next time.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The Biggest El Niño in Recorded History”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: nino, climate, weather, global, happen. This video has 303 sentences and 3439 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:33. The speaker talks fast, about 185 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| atmosphere noun | /ˈætməsˌfɪɹ/ | The gases surrounding the Earth or any astronomical body. |
| phenomenon noun | /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/ | A thing or being, event or process, perceptible through senses; or a fact or occurrence thereof. |
| hurricane noun | /ˈhʌɹɪkeɪn/ | A severe tropical cyclone; an intense storm rotating around a central eye. |
| trigger noun | /ˈtɹɪɡɚ/ | A finger-operated lever used to fire a gun. |
| communicate verb | /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/ | To impart or transmit (information or knowledge) to someone; to make known, to tell. |
| circulation noun | /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/ | The act of moving in a circle, or in a course which brings the moving body to the place where its motion began. |
| predict verb | /pɹɪˈdɪkt/ | To make a prediction: to forecast, foretell, or estimate a future event on the basis of knowledge and reasoning; to prophesy a future event on the basis of… |
| glacier noun | /ˈɡleɪ.ʃɚ/ | A large body of ice which flows under its own mass, usually downhill. |
| tropical adjective | /ˈtɹɑ.pɪ.kəl/ | Of or pertaining to the tropics, the equatorial region between 23 degrees north and 23 degrees south. |
| forecast noun | /ˈfɔːkɑːst/ | An estimation of a future condition. |
| complicated adjective | /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ | Difficult or convoluted. |
| refer verb | /ɹɪˈfɜː/ | To direct the attention of (someone toward something). |
| conclusion noun | /kənˈkluːʒən/ | The end, finish, close or last part of something. |
| arrive verb | /əˈɹaɪv/ | To reach; to get to a certain place. |
| experiment noun | /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/ | A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| warm up verb | /ˌwɔː(ɹ)m ˈʌp/ | To become warmer. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| slow down verb | To decelerate. | |
| come on to verb | To start to. | |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| head up verb | To lead or take the lead in; to direct; to take charge of. | |
| look down verb | To lower one's eyes; to direct one's look downwards. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You're talking about the ocean.
- They're from coming on to our borders.
- As you'd expect, of course.
- I'm trying to make a connection.
- How would you characterize what kind of a climate scientist you are?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | it's been · have been · have not had |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is associated · is considered · are suppressed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | trend, which is · upwelling, which makes · events, which are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 72 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/, thumb /ˈθʌm/, theorist /ˈθiːəɹəst/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: circulation /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/, glacier /ˈɡleɪ.ʃɚ/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: phenomenon /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, circulation /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like atmosphere, phenomenon, hurricane.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.