By treating Earth as a topological insulator — a state of quantum matter — physicists found a powerful explanation for the movements of the planet’s air and seas. The post How Quantum Physicists Explained Earth’s Oscillating Weather Patterns first appeared on Quanta Magazine
While much of our planet’s air and seas are stirred at a tempest’s whim, some features are far more regular. At the equator, thousand-kilometer-long waves persist amid the chaos. In both the ocean and the atmosphere, these gargantuan waves, called Kelvin waves, always travel eastward. And they fuel oscillating weather patterns such as El Niño, a periodic warming of ocean temperatures that returns…