Fury of a Young Lady

Nalaka Gunawardene and Vindana Ariyawansa

The current spell of heavy rainfall and resulting floods are being blamed on a phenomenon called La Niña, which involves both the ocean and atmosphere. La Niña occurs when surface temperatures get cooler than normal (by 3 to 5 degrees Centigrade) in the western Pacific Ocean.

During a La Niña, the cold water that pools near the coast of South America surges westwards across the mighty Pacific, the largest ocean in the world. This flow causes a greater build up of warmer water along the eastern coast of Australia and in the South East Asia region. The contrast in sea surface temperatures across the Pacific, as well as the contrast in air pressure, produces more rainfall.

La Niña is the Spanish term for ‘the girl child’. In that literal sense, the current weather extremes might be called the fury of a very formidable young lady! And it’s not the first time she has unleashed such havoc on us. This week we start off with some questions on freaky weather.

1 The current La Niña has been described as one of the strongest in decades, and has extended its effects as far as Sri Lanka. It has also caused massive rainfall and floods in countries like Australia and the Philippines. Scientists say the current La Nina will last for a few weeks longer, until April or May 2011. In contrast, the last La Niña was a moderate one. When did that happen (clue: not too long ago)?

2 La Niña is sometimes informally called ‘anti-El Niño’, because it is the opposite phenomenon of what is known as El Niño. In the latter, a higher sea surface temperature in tropical Pacific Ocean triggers dry weather conditions and prolonged droughts around the world. La Niña is often preceded by a strong El Niño.

The term ‘El Niño’ translates from Spanish as ‘the boy-child’. It was a reference to the Christ child because of the appearance, usually around Christmas, of a warm ocean current off the South American coast. Who first gave this name to the phenomenon?

3 Both El Niño and La Niña are part of a see-saw like pattern of reversing surface air pressure between the eastern and western tropical Pacific. Scientists call this combined phenomenon the El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. ENSO causes extreme weather such as floods, droughts and other weather disturbances in many regions of the world thousands of kilometres away.

This long-distance connection was first identified by a British physicist who was heading the Indian Meteorological Service at the beginning of the 20th Century. He was trying to figure out how to predict the vagaries of India’s monsoons after a famine in 1899 was caused by monsoon failure. Name this scientist.

4 We recently marked the 25th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the worst accident in the history of manned space exploration up to that time. All seven crew members died when the Challenger exploded and broke up in mid-flight while taking off on its 10th mission on the morning of January 28, 1986.

Among them was the first strict American civilian to go to space as part of the US space programme. She had been selected from a countrywide search and was to be the first teacher in space. Alas, it was not to be. Who was she?

5 The human body is a remarkable production of evolution. There is only one bone in our human body that is not connected to another bone. It is a U-shaped bone at the base of the tongue, and is supported by muscles in the neck. What is this bone called?

6 Hamburgers are a very popular type of fast food. The name ‘hamburger’ has nothing to do with ham. The word first appeared in 1889 in a restaurant review in the US newspaper Walla Walla Union. Which European city inspired the name?

7 J K Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, is the first author in the world to earn more than a billion US Dollars from published writing. That also makes her one of the richest women in the world. She has gone from a struggling single mom to one of the most commercially successful creative writers. What do the initials J and K stand for in her name?

8 The seven Harry Potter books, published between 1997 and 2007, have sold more than 400 million copies worldwide, and remain popular in original English as well as in dozens of translations. Author Rowling says she conceived the idea of Harry and his magical world when she was on a four-hour, delayed train journey in 1990. (So delayed trains can be good for you, sometimes!). Between which two British cities was she travelling on that trip?

9 Which British mathematician, well known for his accomplishments in number theory and mathematical analysis, wrote a famous essay in 1940 titled ‘A Mathematician’s Apology’ where he said: “I have never done anything ‘useful’. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.”

10 The news media have emerged as an important factor in modern world politics and global agenda setting. What global TV network did the former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali once say was effectively ‘the 16th member of the UN Security Council’ – because of its high influence on international relations and diplomacy on a real-time basis?

11 Cricket is especially popular in this Caribbean island nation of 1.3 million people. Brian Lara, one of the greatest batsmen in cricket history, was born there. It is also the birth place of calypso music and limbo dance. This nation is made up of 23 islands. Its capital is Port of Spain. What is this country, which forms part of the West Indies when it comes to international cricket?

12 On January 3, 2011, a Pakistan-born cricketer made his Test debut for Australia, playing against England in Sydney. This left-handed, top order batsman became the 419th Australian representing Australia in Test cricket – and the first Muslim to play for Australia at that level. Who is he?

13 This Year of Chemistry 2011 coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Nobel chemistry Prize awarded to Marie Curie. She was not only the first woman to receive any Nobel Prize, but the first person to receive it twice. Earlier, in 1903, she had shared the Nobel Prize for physics with two other scientists for ‘their study into the spontaneous radiation’. Who shared that prize with her on that occasion?

14 The 1911 Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to Marie Curie in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of which two chemical elements (clue: she named one of them after her country of birth)?

15 BIMSTEC is the acronym given to a sub-regional grouping of countries in South and Southeast Asia, set up in 1997. All member countries (including Sri Lanka) surround and rely on the Bay of Bengal for trade and transport and are keen to maximize cooperation among themselves for growth and social development. It was recently been decided that the BIMSTEC Secretariat would be in Dhaka, Bangladesh. What do the initials BIMSTEC stand for?